Getting the Vaka Hop’e to the Solomon Islands required a lot of preparations. Granted, I had already sailed her 500 miles in the Philippines last year, and we have most of the things we need to live onboard. But this time we would be crossing borders and crossing oceans, and that required a different kind of preparation. I needed lots of paperwork, including registering the boat, getting an MMSI number, making crew lists, and getting insurance. I also needed an AIS to sail inside Indonesia, a ship stamp for official papers, an EPIRB emergency satellite beacon, and a liferaft to top things off. I had never before been a captain on a border crossing, and the borders we were planning to cross seemed scary. Especially crossing into Indonesia, which was the one I was worried about the most.
I was early with the paperwork, getting my boat registration and MMSI through Poland, which seemed like the cheapest and simplest place to do it. However, what they didn’t tell me is that the MMSI takes 14 weeks to process, which ended up becoming a massive problem. To get an EPIRB, which is mandatory, you first need a MMSI number. But before you can get a MMSI number in Poland, you need to have an EPIRB. So, I ordered an EPIRB, told them to wait to program it until I had my MMSI number, and hoped it would get processed fast. If everything worked out, I would have it before leaving Norway in November 2023. It did not work out… It turned out my EPIRB was sold out by the time I had received my MMSI number. I tried ordering from different places, but everywhere was sold out. I tried asking for permission from the registration authorities in Poland to use a different EPIRB, but they said that would take another 14 weeks to process…
In the end, I called the manufacturer and they told me they were completely sold out of my model EPIRB worldwide and would not be able to restock within the next 6 months. By now I had wasted a lot of time, the Philippines was just around the corner, and I was desperate for a solution. I ended up having to get an English MMSI number, which turned out to be very quick. Then, amazingly, I was able to find a supplier in Europe who was able to ship it to the Philippines! It all came together last minute, and it seemed like we finally had a solution. Hopefully, it would arrive before we got ready to leave.
My team in Norway strongly encouraged me to get a liferaft. I heard mixed stories from different people, many saying I didn’t need it, but I ordered one to stay above reproach. Liferafts are not cheap, and they need to be serviced every 3-5 years. I looked around at getting used ones, but they would always be expired, and getting them serviced would cost more than ordering certain new ones. I ordered one from Alibaba, shipped from Singapore, and sent it to YWAM in Davao, Philippines. I didn’t know what it would entail to get it through customs and we failed to get it through the right process, which ended up costing us. First, we had contact with a false shipping agent who promised everything but delivered nothing. He took a substantial amount of money, almost as much as the whole liferaft was worth. The leader of YWAM Davao followed up on the company, trying to get our money back, or at least get the liferaft out. When we arrived in the Philippines, they had tried many times and paid more money, but it was still locked up in customs.
When we arrived in the Philippines, we continued praying for the liferaft to be released. It seemed like we only needed one piece of paper for everything to be resolved. But that piece of paper proved hard to get. In the end, we needed to reach out to some of my YWAM connections, and one of them knew the right guy, who was highly stationed in the customs office. All it took was a phone call, showing up to the office, and some small talk, then the piece of paper was ours. With that piece of paper, we could drive 40 minutes to the warehouse and we were able to release the liferaft! Two months of frustrations was finally resolved.
Amazingly, it all came together on the same day our outboard motor was fixed by the mechanic. After we had collected our outboard engine, we went to the mail courier and got the EPIRB. Even though they were supposed to be express service, they only delivered to our address twice a week. Once that was done we drove over to the warehouse and were able to release our liferaft. All the pieces we needed to launch the boat were in place in one day! The very next day we went back to Samal Island and started the process of launching the Vaka Hop’e.