Clearing Out of Tonga

The story of clearing out starts with our need to top up the diesel tanks and jerry cans and our desire to purchase that diesel at the duty free rate. Another boat in the anchorage, I feel bad that I don’t remember which one, did the legwork to find out the logistics of getting duty free fuel. Basically, you had to clear out with customs and get a letter of approval, then you had to order your fuel in advance, then they bring the fuel to the dock by truck and you fill up. Since they kind of expect you to leave after you clear out but you have to order your fuel at least a day in advance, it seems a bit of a disconnect to me, but whatever. I’ve learned not to ask questions I might not like the answer to.

So, the catch with getting the fuel had nothing to do with the government. It was that you had to order an insane amount of fuel from the fuel company to have it delivered by truck to the fuel dock. To get fuel delivered, many boats had to coordinate their order together. Somehow, it worked out for five of us to do it on the same day: Exodus, Ika, Tusitala, Nirvana, and Iguana. It was a little tricky because we aren’t talking about an insignificant amount of money. So, instead of one person fronting the money for everyone or one person collecting money from everyone, our plan was to all do the checkout process together and all go together with our approval letters from customs to place the fuel order.

We all caught the first shuttle from Big Mama’s over to Nuku’alofa, and the first stop was immigration, which was almost all the way to town, conveniently across the street from the bakery. Ika had gotten there first so they were inside, and the rest of us waited outside. I was next up, and I went inside, and a soft spoken man gave me a form to fill out. As I started to fill it out, a thought occurred to me, and I made a suggestion. I told the man that there were several other people outside in line to do the same thing, so maybe he should give them the forms and they can start filling them out while they wait. He didn’t seem to think it was either a good or bad idea, but he humored me and went out and gave them all the forms. Efficiency and timeliness just aren’t on the radar at any beauraucratic office, but even less so in the islands. After I finished filling out the forms he stamped and signed them, and then went to make copies. The nearest photocopier didn’t work, so he stared at it for about 10 minutes before going to find another one about 15 ft away. That one didn’t work either so he stared at that one for what seemed like even longer. He never asked anyone for help and never really tried to fix anything. Finally, he just came back to the desk and started handwriting out a second copy of the form. Seriously. These are times when you just take deep breaths and remember how much you appreciate where you are. And these are also the times when I remember why I’m the one handling this kind of thing and not Tim. He would have even less patience for it. Unfortunately, one boat in our group hit a snag at immigration. Their visas were expired because they thought when they arrived the got 3 months rather than 1 month and never renewed. In the end they were able to pay an additional fee and eventually sort it all out, but it wasn’t without its headaches.

After immigration, we went to an office upstairs from customs to pay our port fees. This was something we had to do in Neiafu as well, but curiously, not in Pangai. Basically, it’s a fee based on your boat’s tonnage. It was at this point that we noticed that the tonnage listed on our coast guard registration is erroneously high. So, at the window when she asked my tonnage I gave her the correct number, not what was listed on our registration paper, counting on that she probably wouldn’t look at the paper anyway. And she didn’t.  Then we went downstairs to the customs office, waited in a room for about 20 minutes, then we finally had our clearance out of Tonga and our approval letter for the duty-free fuel.

The last stop of the day was at the Total Fuel office to place our order for the next day. This was kind of a pain, because we had to tell them exactly how much fuel we wanted. If we overestimated, we had to pay for it anyway. If we underestimated, well, whoever was last to fill up would likely get shorted. And when we asked how they measure the fuel they responded that it’s with stick lowered into the tank. If it’s sounding like I’m setting you up for some drama, well, I wish I could remember one way or the other. Exodus was first to fuel up in the morning, and the only drama for us was that we had to wait about 2.5 hours before the fuel truck every showed up. We filled up and as far as we know we took about what we had ordered, and no one after us ever complained or came after us with pitchforks or anything. It took the better part of a day and a half, but we were officially cleared out of Tonga.