Passage to India – When Size is EVERYTHING!
Setting out on a blue water passage takes months of planning. It is not only about preparing the boat but preparing yourselves as well. Though stressful at times, it is reassuring to know that a painstaking review of all things essential has been done and many repairs, replacements or new kit bought on board.
Our jobs to be done list, prepared some 8 months out from the planned departure date, contained 146 tasks and sub-tasks. At times our percentage complete seemed to be stagnating below 50% but as our departure date loomed we began to make headway.
In the last few weeks before departure, it actually felt like we were going backwards not forwards as delays arose to get jobs finished or new kit bought aboard began to play up. Just a few examples include a full replacement to our month’s old water maker, and a 2 am technical support call to get our Iridium sat phone firmware upgraded so it could run our satellite Wi-Fi router. Oh, and the smell of burning from behind our fuse box turned out to be a burnt-out in the switch that controls the inverter and shore power!
The final few days….
The timing of our last-minute fixes coincided with a 4-day holiday in the UAE. These are the long holidays in perfect weather that we have looked forward to in the past and would have taken advantage of them to go camping, scuba diving, relaxing and enjoying. However, trying to get parts and people to help solve our last minute issues was made even more challenging by the holidays. Kudos to Sandeep, Victron; Vincent, Watermaker; Lloyd, GDS (Elcome); and Pedro, Ocens Sidekick who went above and beyond to help us resolve the respective issues.
December 4th 2019 was the first working day back after the holiday when all the necessary authorities we needed would be available to complete the paperwork needed to clear out of UAE. The morning of the 4th arrived after a late-night saying our final goodbyes at Dubai Offshore Sailing Club (DOSC), and a 5 am start to allow is time to motor sail for 2 hours along the coast to be at the Coastguard for 7.30 am. Bleary-eyed we arrived, only to discover that we didn’t need to be at the coastguard with the boat, or even in person resulting in us turning back to DOSC hoping there was still an empty berth for us.
As far as we were aware at this stage, all we needed to do was wait while our agent started the clearing out process. When that was complete, we would meet at the Coastguard, without the boat and then proceed to immigration for our exit stamp. All very straightforward, until he fun started and we were asked to provide documentation of all our safety and navigation equipment on board. With no guidance on what was needed, I set about painstakingly creating a checklist based on a PDF document that is typically used for annual boat registration. This included copying the Arabic translation for each item to pre-empt any potential language issues, copied line by line and with extra safety equipment added that had not appeared on the original list. An hour later and we had a finely crafted document along with our recent surveyors report being sent to the agent. Given that FTA was only open until 1 pm it was already looking unlikely to be able to complete step one of the process, let alone the full clearance, and as predicted we were told that clearance was not going to happen and to try again the next day.
Fresh and eager the next morning we eagerly waited for the call to say our document had done the trick, but at 9.30 am we received a call from the agent to say that FTA was now saying that we were being refused permission to sail because our boat was too “small”. It is fair to say that at 37ft Aroha is not the biggest of yachts but built as a cruiser and a Category A boat she is defined as Ocean-going. We had also previously sailed Aroha to the Maldives, Chagos Islands and Sri Lanka back in 2010, but this was not even a consideration for the Official we were dealing with. As a New Zealand registered boat, we were then told we needed to get a no-objection certificate from the NZ authorities – which ones were not specified – to say that New Zealand had no issue with us sailing and would effectively not hold UAE responsible if anything happened. It was now mid-morning in UAE and 6.30 pm in New Zealand so Bryan decided it was now time to contact the New Zealand embassy. After getting the answerphone when he called he decided the best thing to do was head over and see them. After a quick change from his sailing gear to more respectable trousers and shirt he headed across to make what must have been one of their strangest requests, and one we were not entirely convinced that they could resolve. While the Embassy would not accept to write the undertaking, they did say that if Bryan wrote the NOC then the Embassy would effectively notarize it. It was the best we could do, but the FTA was still refusing to budge saying that it had to come from the Embassy directly.
At this point, I decided to think through my contacts and see if I knew anyone with some wasta – Arabic for influence. Thirty minutes later and I was on the phone to the Executive Director at Dubai Maritime City Authority, who had been my CEO when I worked with Dubai Maritime City a decade before. Despite claiming to not remember me, he offered his help and shortly afterwards received a call from one of his team to say that we did not need FTA approval at all and DMCA could provide us with the permission needed. As luck would have it, this call coincided with news from our agent that FTA was now prepared to give permission to sail on condition that the New Zealand Embassy emailed them in the near future to reconfirm they had no objection to us sailing. Quite how or if this would ever happen was no longer our concern and 30 minutes later I joined Bryan and the Coastguard boat registration offices to move on to step 2 – coastguard approval to sail.
Despite the somewhat dreary offices, a coffee machine and frequent chocolates provided by the coastguard team to waiting customers made the wait bearable. We also took advantage of the boat registration signage service to get some new NZ stickers made up to replace the old Dubai DP number we had previously needed to display on the boat. My new contact in DMCA kept in constant contact to make sure we were not facing any issues and made sure the DMCA official based there knew who we were to keep things moving along.
Things then started to happen very quickly as one official document after another was handed over, mostly in Arabic but apparently giving us the approval to take our “small” boat and leave. A swift visit to immigration followed and by 3.20 pm with no fanfare and a huge sigh of relief we set sail from Dubai – next stop…..Kochi, India.
Follow and like us to be notified of future blogs!
