Lucinda and Al on SV Ten Gauge left NZ in 2018, cruised French Poly from Australs to Marquesas for almost a year before heading to Alaska for the northern fall/winter/summer of 2019/2020. Now on their return trip to NZ they stopped over in Apia, Samoa and gave this report:
1) Western Samoa: Arriving boats are most definitely NOT allowed into the marina until AFTER they’ve cleared all the health, customs and immigration items. Apparently this became a headache for the marina, and had to change at some point. Sounds like this change came from cruisers not doing what they were asked to do.
2) We were first told that all officials would come to the boat at anchor, and we had to stay on the boat until completed. In the end we were told to walk to immigration in town. It’s more than a week and we’re still not sure what’s up with Agriculture/biosecurity.
3) Health came first and did a rapid antigen test for covid on us. They did ask if we had evidence of supervised testing prior to leaving last port. We didn’t. I’m not clear if we’d have been tested on arrival regardless. Everyone we talked to had same as us, and didn’t come with prior supervised testing.
4) In Apia nobody has answered the vhf for cruisers until after 9am. A container ship got an answer at 6am, but he’d been calling for well over an hour. A couple boats this week called for several hours during the day, got no answer, came in and anchored and they say nobody challenged them on it in the end. VHF reception still seems to be an issue.
5) The Port Captain’s email to us prior to arrival clearly instructed us NOT to come into the channel until receiving verbal permission. Everyone calls them ” Apia Port Control” on radio calls.
6) The rest of the arrival protocols seem to more or less align with what’s on Noonsite. The staff here seems to be quite under-resourced. Our clearing in has been dis-combobulated. The different boats here all had slightly different experiences.
7) Everyone from the Port Control, to health, customs, immigration, the marina, the guys on the dock…. All have been uniformly friendly and welcoming. But not all organized individually, not organized between departments, not fast, not easy to get hold of, and not really clear. Everyone has been polite and most of them even apologizing for not having made a smoother process for us.
8) US Samoa – we decided not to go since our best info from shore based people’s research was a no go. We met two policemen from US Samoa visiting here in Apia the other day, doing a few days official exchange of some kind. They told us US Samoa would have been open to us, and encouraged us to visit later if we wanted.
9) I got permission from Tonga to go to Minerva on the way to NZ. I emailed Friday morning, got the response Tuesday morning. I requested ” Up to a week weather depending, around 7 October, weather depending”.