The bureaucratic bull$hit that we deal with - EP 56
this week on life on jupiter we are done with antigua we check out and head for saint martin however on arrival things don't go as planned. Too many people trying to enter the country illegally we're trying to do it legally i need a drink hello i have a application for a visa for my wife uh and i have a reference number here can i give that to you give me a second okay what's the name princess pasquel p-a-s-c-u-a-l uh this was about friday i think it was but we have an email back requesting more information and i i have a problem with that i just wanted to ask you and i have a reference number here can i give that to you okay so it is all in english um yeah no it is in english um but it's an explanation now i i phoned your office here on friday and i explained we are on a cruising boat we've been sailing for two years from from southeast asia to here so we've never lived anywhere we're living on the ocean and the lady i spoke to on friday she said just write an explanation of that so that's what i've uh uploaded to the internet there so again who did i speak to i don't know the lady's name but she was very helpful because we've tried two times we've tried my wife is filipino so she needs a visa and we tried the philippine police and they said but you don't live in the philippines and that's right we don't uh at the moment we're in antigua and we asked the antigua police and they said but you're not resident here we cannot give you a certificate so um yeah the lady explained that all we need to do is explain that in a letter and that's what i've done and it's yeah it's called police certificate on the uploads do you think that'll be okay uh in about we will leave antigua next week end of next week next week tomorrow in the morning okay okay we'll do okay okay thank you very much thank you very much bye-bye so we're in deep bay still antigua and this will be hopefully our last day we are waiting for my certificate they're gonna ring me for my boatmaster certificate i've got to go pick it up and then we will check out and head to saint martin with my boatmaster certificate in hand we checked out of antigua the plan was to anchor for the night and then leave very early in the morning so i need to explain what's driving us at the moment since we were in south africa uh my mobile number didn't work from australia anymore and my bank in hong kong hsbc in hong kong where all of ninety percent of my savings are um the security device stopped working i had to re-register one and it would send a one-time pin code to my registered mobile in australia and of course it doesn't work so i said no no i need to change my phone number for my registered phone number oh you need to fill out a form in this day and age fill out a form okay uh and send it back to hong kong and that's six weeks in the mail unless i was to do the fedex you know 130 dollar thing so anyway i sent off the form and they said oh no we don't recognize your signature you need to come into the branch i said i am in south africa so i did another form with in fact i think i did two more forms and sent that off together with just other attempts at my signature i mean what more can i do and nope refuse that's not that's not your signature i i need to proceed to a branch all right where's the nearest branch the nearest branch was miami from cape town and i said can't you see that's an issue for me i'm in south africa can i just go to a lawyer or the police to prove my identity? No, you need to proceed to the nearest branch that was a year ago and um i still don't have access to my money so we need i i need to get to miami to sort out this bank thing i could fly to miami i mean i don't have the money to but i could fly there sort the bank out but then i may get stuck because of this covid rubbish. i may get quarantined somewhere out. princess is alone on the boat here in antigua so um the idea is to get princess with me and on jupiter to miami that's the plan that was not looking good for this last year it's uh us has not been offering tourist visas i've already got a visa already from from work so i can go but princess cant. she doesn't have a visa but we've had some good news that the US has started to take interviews for the b1b2 visa so we need to get to bahamas to nassau that's the um well the next nearest u.s embassy we need to get to bahamas so that fingers crossed we get a visa we can go to the us i can go to the bank and sort out this so we need to get bahamas but now first we've got to get the visa for you for bahamas which is a problem they want you know because philippines unfortunately need to get visas many many places but we can't give them all the documents they want they want a police certificate stating that you've been a good girl for the last year or whatever and so we've approached the philippine police department online and they say no because you don't live in the philippines we can't give you one um so bahamas visa application center said well go to antigua please we went there and they said but you're not a resident we can't give you a police service we've already been denied so we paid the fee we've been denied the bahamas visa once but now we're trying again and i'm trying to explain our situation on the phone and we might be getting somewhere we might be so that's our plan we've got to get to bahamas so we're going to leave antigua shortly we're going to stop in saint martin apparently that's open and we can go straight in as a crew on a yacht no problems and then step step up to bahamas after that that's what we're working on now jesus yeah so hard these are the hassles of uh being itinerant hippie floaters. fingers crossed they'll
let us in bahamas. fingers crossed they'll give you a US visa. fingers crossed we go to america anyway and that's only just so i can get a few dollars out of the bank it's all tied up in hong kong and the bastards won't give it to me god infuriating anyway so the passage from antigua to saint maarten is an easy 90 mile day sail but we did want to get there for the 3 pm bridge opening to enter the lagoon good morning finally we leave antigua it's uh and right up until our very last day on our visa too i had to wait around for my boatmaster uh paperwork to come back and even when we go into the office she still hadn't done it and so she said come back later and i said well you know how long will it take she said well you could wait if you like she finished it in five minutes we've been waiting all week for it one more hour yeah and it was five minutes so anyway yeah all checked out and on our way to martin which is a 90 mile passage we left at quarter past four this morning and at this stage it says we'll be there at about 1.30 or 2 o'clock we'll be able to check in and go through the bridge and have one dollar beers i'm not gonna drink beer. okay you can have a five dollar coke and i'll have one dollar beer probably what it'll be so yeah we've got perfect wind the beam wind at the moment about 15 to 20.
keep catching the odd wave come across the boat though and we get wet but anyway it's okay we're getting along at around 10 knots got one reef in the main maybe you have to put another one in later the wind's supposed to get up to 25 but it's good to be on the sea again so we caught a fish so after how many months i haven't got it yet i hope we can get it in that fish i hope it's amazing much is it but it it's so small it's big enough big enough yeah oh sorry wow it doesn't look big in the in the water it's not big it's big no it's not let's go now ah we had a a good sail from antigua to st martin 90 miles in 10 hours so it was a good average 9 knots a little bit boisterous just a bit short chop but and then we got here we come into the lagoon we happened to time it nicely waited for the bridge to open we come inside go to the police to check in they give us more forms to fill out we have to go walk down the road to mcdonald's to get to the wi-fi upload those forms and then send them to email address go back to the police station and we thought it was all good but then they said princesses filipino went yeah well that's a problem because she needs a visa and i said no because on your website it says that people that normally need a visa if they arrive by boat they can apply the visa waiver if they arrive by boat so i didn't read the fine print though it says but you will need an agent so um they did not check us in. see they gave us a list of agents so um now we still don't have internet because well for one i can't get any money out of an atm yet this is a fairly usual drama every new country you go you've got to find an atm that takes international cards so there's that and then because we were walking around at about five o'clock and i think the the phone shops were closing so um tomorrow we'll go and get a sim card we can get some data and contact some agents so it will cost us uh hopefully maybe two or three hundred dollars at the most and an agent will check us in there's uh alternative options france side of St Martin is just across there and someone said just go over to france and check in like it was so easy but someone else said no no you need a pcr before you check into france so anyway these are the dramas every country you go to you do as much research as you can before you go and this is the disarray that we arrive in you know we thought it had was going to be a smooth entry but difficult gotta hire an agent anyway right now we're back on the boat cooking some dinner we've been up since 3 45 this morning so a bit sleepy have a scotch or three go to bed cheers check out this playlist featuring one of our most favorite places on earth sailing the wild coast of africa
2021-10-01 09:12
