Our plan when we left Ao Chalong was to sail up the west coast of Phuket and mainland Thailand as far north as necessary to then make a good angle to get to the Surin Islands, which would be our last anchorage in Thai waters before we set sail for the Andaman Islands. We visited a couple of nice anchorages along the coast – Nai Harn (very pretty), Patong (Gold Coast on steroids), and Ban Thung Dap (comfortable anchorage up a river). The sail west to the Surin Islands was very pleasant and once settled in the anchorage at Ko Surin, we discovered that we had quite a few friends there also: two boats with whom we did the Indo rally, and a family who Phil had befriended during his solo sailing in Malaysia, along with another boat also on their way to the Andamans. A busy social evening followed! Phil was particularly happy to see his friends on Mustang Sally as he had spent a bit of time with their 8 year old son Morgan, and it was fun to see him again. Phil and Morgan had made up all sorts of stories about pirates and hunting for treasure.

 

We were up and away early next morning anticipating a 2-3 day sail to Port Blair, our first landfall in the Andaman Islands. The trip over there took 59 hours and we averaged 6 knots boat speed. Sounds OK to the sailors. But we were on a starboard tack the whole way with the wind pretty much on the nose. This meant 2.5 days on a fair lean, making it difficult to make coffee and meals, shower, and do other things below. We (I) were certainly over that by the time we got to Port Blair. I had my first night watch in quite a while. All looked very quiet when Phil went to bed on that first night but he had only been in bed for a couple of hours when we clearly started crossing a shipping lane and I had to get him up as some of these ships liked to pass a bit too close for my comfort. Five of them crossed our path in a period of about 1.5 hours, and we needed to radio two of them to make sure they had seen us. Thank goodness for AIS which provides us with an estimate of the closest distance to us that we can expect any given ship to come, the time when that will occur and shows us the trajectory of us and them. After that episode, we did not see a single vessel of any kind until we were approaching Port Blair.

 

Port Blair is a large well protected port the entrance to which is very easy to navigate. Not so easy though to find the spot where the authorities wanted us to anchor. We had a lot of difficulty tuning our ear to the Indian accent and thought we had understood the directions. However, when we started heading to what we thought was the spot, we had an excited voice on the radio asking “Paseafique, where do you think you are going?!!” After some back and forth and asking him to repeat himself several times, I finally asked him to give us some co-ordinates- numbers were  much easier to understand- and we settled in to wait for the clearing in process to start.

 

The Andamans belong to India and so clearing in follows Indian protocol with visits from the coast guard, immigration, and customs. Once cleared by these agencies, yachties can go ashore but must then visit the harbour master to have the planned itinerary approved, as there are many parts of the Andamans that are off limits to foreigners. The whole thing turned into somewhat of a circus. There was one other boat (Lunasea) in the anchorage also waiting clearance as they had arrived earlier that day. Port control were soon on the radio asking Lunasea to go in to shore in their dinghy to pick up the immigration officers. So off Steve went but alas he had problems with the dinghy outboard. We then heard port control on the radio to Lunasea, asking if they had another dinghy they could launch to go and rescue Steve and bring the officers on board. Sure thing- while many yachts have two outboards, none have two dinghys (except perhaps the super yachts). I got on the radio and offered to help with our dinghy so off Phil went for the fairly long dinghy ride to the jetty. However, by the time he got there, immigration had organised a local boat to bring them and Steve back to Lunasea, towing the offending dinghy. While immigration were on board Lunasea, we got a call to go and pick up the officers from customs. So off Phil went again and brought them back to our boat. They asked lots of questions about what items we had on board (with special interest in a satellite phone which you are not allowed to have here, and quantities of alcohol) and duly completed all the relevant paperwork (lots of it). The head customs guy clearly formalities and used our boat stamp all over the various forms and then got Phil to sign all of this in multiple places. Then Phil took the customs officers over to Lunasea, and as immigration were finished there, they come over to us. Next lot of questions and forms to complete, sign and stamp with our boat stamp. Passports stamped and job done. They then asked Phil to go ashore again to pick up another person (we were not sure who this was) and bring him back. Immigration departed in their own boat, and picked up the customs officers from Lunasea, and returned to their offices. Phil went off to get this other person. Meanwhile, the coast guard had arrived at Lunasea and were on board for quite a long time. We were hoping that they would also visit us that same evening (it was close to sunset by this stage), but not to be and they disappeared off into that sunset on their large launch. Phil returned without his passenger, as he had his own boat and made his own way out to Lunasea. It turned out that he was a local whom Lunasea had organised to help them with shore activities. All of this took place late in the afternoon and into the evening when we had each only had a few hours sleep the previous night, and were several hours ahead on our body clocks. Needless to say, we were exhausted, as you probably are just reading this!

 

We waited all the next day anticipating that the coast guard would turn up, as we had been advised by port control that morning. By mid afternoon, when we called port control we were advised that the coast guard would not be visiting that day and that we were not allowed to go ashore until we had been cleared by the coast guard. This was frustrating but not unanticipated, as we had heard tales of this sort of delay in Port Blair before. People sort of shrug their shoulders about it, and say “This is India”. The coast guard did appear the next morning, all smiles and polite as you like. It seems there was some mix up with our documentation and the coast guard were not alerted to our need for “processing”. They spent ages on the boat, first of all completing the forms and asking us lots of questions, and then having a good look below, including in the bilges. They certainly take their role in protecting the very eastern border of India seriously. They were finished around lunch time, and just as we were anticipating that we had enough time left in the day to complete the formalities at the harbour master, the coast guard told us we had to remain on the boat until they finishing their processing ashore and that port control would advise us when this was done. They expected it would be around 4pm! It was indeed completed by then, but we had to radio port control to find out. If we had waited for them to contact us, I reckon we would still be sitting on the boat in Port Blair. So 2 ½ days and we were yet to get ashore.

 

Next morning, it was off to the harbour master with our permit in hand and draft itinerary for approval. As It was Saturday, we were a bit concerned that the office would be closed. It was open, but there was some question as to whether the harbour master himself would be in and no-one seemed to know the answer. One of his junior (but not so young) officers did some initial processing and checking of our itinerary, which meant he had to call someone and check each of our planned destinations in turn. After sitting in this downstairs office for some time twiddling our thumbs and trying to make small talk with this somewhat stern officer, we were ushered upstairs and into the large and more formal office of the harbour master. He was very charming, welcomed us to India and so on. As a number of our planned destinations were off the agenda, we had to write out our final itinerary by hand for the harbour master to approve. So after 72 hours, we had finally completed all the formalities.

 

We spent the rest of that day being ferried around by a local driver, Ravi, stopping at the money changer, internet café, supermarket, vegie market, fruit market, bakery, and fresh (and I mean fresh as in choose your chicken while it is still alive) chicken shop. These various errands were interspersed with a morning tea stop at Ravi’s uncles’s street food stall (yummy samosas and chai tea), lunch at a local (with the emphasis on local) restaurant, and an afternoon stop for chai tea. We returned to the boat tired but with everything we needed to start our Andaman adventure.