We are signed up with the Sail 2 Indonesia rally this July. The rally helps facilitate paperwork for the boat to enter Indonesian water, however, obtaining visas were the responsibility of each vessel. The rally takes approximately 3 months so we needed to apply for a 3 month social visa which can only be done through an Indonesian consulate. Being that we were coming from Vanuatu, we decided to apply in Noumea, New Caledonia, where clearance into the country is free and the consulate is right in town. We could have sailed to Cairns, Australia and sent off our application and our passports to Sydney…but with time being an issue and I don’t feel comfortable mailing off my passport to ANYONE….we decided releasing our passports to someone I could actually see and knew where the office was located, was our best option.
I have had a few requests to inform people of our experience applying for our Indonesian visas for the Sail 2 Indonesia Rally this year so I thought I would post how and what our experience entailed.
Indonesian Consulate address: 2 Rue Lamartine, Baie de I’Orphelinat, BP 26, Noumea Tel: +687 28 25 74
*Note: if you use Google maps to find the consulate, it will show a slightly different location but within a block. Use the below map to get to the gate to the consulate.
They only process visas between the hours of 10am-12pm so applications need to be received between these hours and beware of the Indonesian holidays…. we had 2 holidays within the week we were trying to apply..lucky us.
Provided the application was complete, it will take 3 business days for them to grant the visas, to the hour (turn in at 11am, you get it back at 11 am 3 business days later)! However, we arrived at the consulate exactly when they said our visas would be complete but “the guy” who signs the visas was in a meeting and they told us to come back that afternoon to pick up…. I am not going to argue : )
*Note: you need to pick up a blank application at their office. Unfortunately all the 3 month social visas do not have the same application format so each consulate has their own format so applications for Sydney, Australia or other countries do not apply here in Noumea, New Caledonia.
The cost for the application here is $5650 CPF, roughly $57 usd. However, they do not take cash so you will need a “bank cleared check”. We contacted the rally administrators, Lyn and John Martin, and they gave us Chole’s information. Chole has been helping us Yachties with checks for visas for over 9 years. She does not get paid to do this as her regular job is managing super yachts. Her office is in the map above but when we contacted her we were at Port Moselle and she offered to pick us up and drive us to the consulate. She did give us the option to pay by credit card as she can process these type of transactions at her office but we decided to pay in cash and we DID give her $20 usd for all her time and energy. She was gracious and accepted. She is wonderful and kind and does this in her own time….please be aware of this.
Chole’s information: Chloe Morin, Operations Manager at Noumea Ocean; Address: 5 ter Rue Adolphe Barrau, Marina Port du Sud, BP 1517, 98 845 Noumea Cedex; Tel: +687 713 723
You also need passport sized photos for each person applying for the visa. I tried to print off photos on regular white paper and it was turned down. We also asked if a Polaroid photo would do but because of the black back side of Polaroid film, it was also not going to be accepted. Below is a map of where you can obtain the right sized passport photos. The cost was about $10 for 4 copies each person’s photo.
At this point we were ready to turn our application in with all of the proper attachments. Most of these were either already filled out with the rally admins or provided to us through the rally. This is what we completed and turned in, along with our passports at the Indonesian Consulate.
Once we had all the documents in hand we left our passports with them. We had to wait over the weekend. Finally our visas looks like this:
For those you who are not participating in a rally who helps facilitate the yachts paperwork I found a great resource from the SoggyPaws website. They completed their Indonesian paperwork in 2017 from the Philippines and believe the information is current and relevant. I can’t attached the pdf they posted on their site here but feel free to visit their site anyways…a wealth of information and really didn’t need to recreate the wheel. I did register to YachTER’s website, the online vessel registration for Indonesia, and it seems very straight forward. On the YachTER’s website you can download the declaration of health form as well.
http://svsoggypaws.com/files/Indo%20Paperwork-Davao%20v1.2.pdf
Good luck and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about our process.
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