Weather looks good….mostly….we decided it was time to get moving down the “wild coast”. Des has been in constant contact with all of us in Richards Bay and he mentioned this below:
December 8th was a Sunday therefore clearance out had to be done on Friday, December 6th….note you can clear in any time but you can’t clear out over the weekend…FYI..and I believe you have 48 hours before you have to leave port after clearing out….but you can easily clear back into the port (you are not clearing into the country again)…so do as you please.
First Step was to fill out our “Flight Plan” at the Tuzi Gazi marina where we were docked.
At the office getting paperwork in order….
NOTE: We put Cape Town as our “destination” hoping to make a direct run. I don’t know what others did but if you did plan to stop in Durban, East London, Port Elisabeth, Kysnsa, St. Francis Bay, Mossel Bay, etc…I would suggest you put it down. However, we heard that Durban is the only other port (as of writing this) where you have to “officially” check in/out of that specific port…so you would have to check in and out of Durban…not something we wanted to do…hence waiting for a weather window to at least get us past Durban….we are lazy!
Flight plan p.1 
Flight plan p.2 
Flight plan p.3 
Flight plan p.4 
Flight plan p.5 
Flight plan p.6
After all that writing we headed into a car to go to customs….same place where we cleared in…same 5 minute stop…no fee…
Next was to the immigration office. It took a bit of wandering around to find the little door where we had to go. There were lots of getting ready to head so we saw lots of friends….no fee. NOTE: Tell them you are leaving THAT DAY and not another date…!
Next we needed to stop off at the Zululand Yacht Club…we don’t know why or understand how ZYC is in charge of checking people out…and not Tuzi Gazi…politics? Oh well…it is what it is….no fee just a few stamps.
Almost done… we had to stop off at the “port” police which is a floor down from the Tuzi Gazi marina office. Just a few places to sign…no fee either.
Finally, Trevor gave the completed/stamped Flight Plan to Elize at Tuzi Gazi marina who kindly scanned and emailed us the 4 pages of our Flight Plan required, or at least that was all that was emailed to us. We were told we needed Richards Bay Port Control to confirm receipt of our Flight Plan.
Elize emailed us this with the subject heading of the email address to the Richards Bay Port Control.
They said 24 hours before our estimated time of departure (but not too far in advance we were told)…I think I send it to them the night before we left so about 12 hours before we planned to leave. As we were preapring to untie the lines, we still hadn’t heard back. So we got on the VHF ch 12 to make sure they received it and that we could leave. Within 5 minutes or so they got back to us and all is good…..
…and we are off…it did take 7 people to get us off the dock as the wind was blowing us on to the dock and the tide was pushing us in….but with a few tries and with people and lines pulling us in all directions…we made it off the dock….Holy Slow Flight $#*! show!!!!
Next Up: Passages from Richards Bay to Cape Town, South Africa…