We checked in at Cozumel on Friday, January 7, 2011, and found out the following procedure:-

Call Capitania de Puerto de Cozumel upon arrival.

They’ll inform the Sector Naval of your arrival, and there may possibly be an inspection by the Navy.

After that (or if the Port Captain does not reply, it happened to us twice!) go ashore, to the Port Captain’s office (2nd floor) or directly to the office of the “Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transporte” (1st floor).

They will give you a document called “Solicitud de Autorizacion de Arribo” (Arrival Authorization Request), which you then take to the airport.

At the airport, go to the Offices of Immigration, Customs, International Health and Agriculture (best in this order), fill in their papers and get stamps from them on the document “Solicitud de Autorizacion de Arribo” (Arrival Authorization Request).

Return with that document to the “Secretaria de Comunicaciones y Transporte”, where they will finish the check-in. It costs 306 Mexican Pesos (approx USD 30) and they will then give you a document called “Acuse de Recibo de Documentos”.

That’s it. Nobody asked us for any other fees and according to all officials, there won’t be more fees when checking out, either.

Navy, Customs and Agriculture (“Secretaria de Agricultura, Ganaderia, desarollo rural, Pesca y alimentacion…”) might inspect the boat.

To go to the airport it is either 20min walk from the Capitania, 70 Mexican Pesos by cab or 25 Mexican Pesos if you ask the cab driver to drop you off at the roundabout in front of the airport premises.

When we checked in, Navy and Customs thoroughly inspected the boat inside, but were very friendly and relaxed and kept stressing that it was just a routine.

It took us about 4 hours for everything because we also had to wait quite a bit for the Agriculture guy at the airport, who was busy inspecting an incoming plane.

On Saturday, January 8, an American ship without American Zarpe checked in, it took them only 1 hour, with no inspection at all. Maybe because it was Saturday. Maybe because they only sailed for 4 days, who knows. But not having a Zarpe was no problem – or they were lucky it was a Saturday…

Our Zarpe from Roatan was from December 17 (we never checked in into Belize), maybe that was suspicious.

Well, hope this information helps.

Thanks for your great site!

Kind regards

Iris

PS: We anchored between Marina and Ferry dock. In that area, you have to leave the dinghy on the beach or anchor it. To go into town, you can use the dock of the dive shop Aqua Safari, they’re very nice.

Also in that area, there are huge blocks of an old dock in the water, but fairly deep (at approx 4-5m?), though because of the clearness of the water, they might appear a lot closer to the surface

What you see on the NE shore in order of appearance:

Hotels

Marina Abrigo (can’t really see it…)

Airport

Mini supermarket with a big dark blue sign on top.

Capitania

Ferry dock (at the height of the street to town square)

one little private dock

one broken dock

dock from dive shop Aqua Safari

Int Cruise ship dock 1

Int Cruise ship dock 2

Our thanks to Iris for this very comprehensive report.