BAD NEWS ABOUT CRUISING IN ECUADOR
Bahía de Caráquez, Ecuador, Saturday, 21 July 2007

Well, I suppose it’s been too good to last. Besides the fabulous scenery, friendly people, temperate and storm-free climate, Ecuador has also been attractive for cruisers because of its hassle-free administrative environment and its very low day-to-day costs. This is definitely changing.

Galapagos set to get much more expensive

Leave aside Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands some 600 nm offshore: a fair amount of bureaucratic cha-cha has always been associated with sailing there. Cruising costs have been significant out there and are now set to shoot up again. In an attempt to reduce the numbers of visitors to the natural wonder, the Quito government plans to limit visitors - not only, as at present, by requiring cruising permits, charging park fees, etc., but also by the classical capitalist method of raising the prices just to get in and now the obligatory use of an agent.

Mainland Ecuador

Mainland Ecuador has up until now been a different story. Show up at a port, fly your yellow “Q” (Quarantine) flag, receive the Port Captain’s petty officer for a brief inspection of boat, crew and papers, check into Immigration and you are set to be a tourist for 90 to 180 days. No hassle about importing your boat. No mandatory fishing licences. No park fees. The Port Captain’s fees are minimal. No anchorage fees. In fact, it’s been rather like cruising in Canada. By comparison it is a minor inconvenience that there is no Migración in Bahía itself and you have to get over to Manta, about two hours or more away by bus.

At Bahía de Caráquez there is a virtual-marina called Puerto Amistad. “Virtual” because there are no docks, no breakwalls or the like. But Tripp Martin, the ex-cruiser and ex-pat American who owns it along with a local partner, has set out about 24 mooring buoys in front of his up-scale restaurant in the huge estuary of the Rio Chone, provided dinghy-docking facilities, showers, laundry, fuel/water delivery, etc. The holding in the Rio Chone is great even if you want to leave your boat long-term at anchor and travel to Peru or the Ecuadorian sierras.

Life is calm and quiet in Bahía, personal and boat safety is tops, the bureaucracy has been barely present and the local prices have been reasonable and stable. It does cost $30 a pop to hire a pilot to get you in or out of the silted-up river mouth and, since Ecuador is not a “cruising ground” like British Columbia or New Zealand (i.e., there aren’t that many places to visit along the coast), most people come to find a safe and inexpensive place to park their boats while they fly back to Europe or the States for a summertime visit or to trek to Machu Picchu). Nobody makes day or weekend sailing jaunts out of this harbour.

Mooring costs shooting up

Local prices have stayed quite stable (you can eat a set two-course lunch with a freshly squeezed juice at local restaurants for $1.50 a person; you can travel by executive bus to Quito for $9 a head). But boating costs are inflating sharply. A couple of years ago the river pilot cost $5. It costs $30 now. A mooring ball at Puerto Amistad, for example, cost about $100 monthly two years ago (and included showers and dinghy docking) and dinghy-docking fees (with shower usage) for anchored-off boats cost only $1 a day. That same mooring ball now costs $210 monthly, however, and the dinghy dock costs $2 daily. Tripp Martin is cagey if asked about further increases but points out that Salinas (i.e. Puerto Lucia) charges much, much more and is introducing a liveaboard charge of $200 for moored-off boats. For moored-0ff boats!

So, cruisers are gritting their teeth and expecting “marina” prices will go up again next season even though general price inflation in Ecuador is very low (under 5% p.a). It remains to be seen just how elastic demand for moorings and dinghy docking really is.

No fuel to be sold into portable tanks

Pump prices for diesel are $1.04 anywhere in Ecuador; Super and Regular gasoline are about double. There has been no fuel dock at Bahía since the earthquake and El Niño damage back in the 1980s and ‘90s. Puerto Amistad would therefore deliver jugged diesel to your boat for a slight mark-up over the pump price. To fill up their portable outboard-motor tanks, most cruisers simply dropped by the nearby gas station themselves. Commercial ships were supplied with un-subsidised fuel at Guayaquil but there was no provision for yachts to get in to that fuel dock.

Apparently there has been a lot of smuggling of cheap fuel to Colombia where the prices are not subsidised. Of course, it’s hard to imagine that the smugglers were using 5-gallon jerry jugs on a large scale! To put a stop to all this, however, the federal government has now decreed that fuel will no longer be pumped into portable tanks. Gas stations are now only allowed to sell into built-in vehicle or vessel tanks. Outboarders and catamaraners are out of luck and so, it would seem, are cruisers who need diesel in a harbour with no fuel dock whatsoever.

The rules apparently apply to locals and foreigners alike. I am not sure how local panga fishermen are dealing with this situation, but I certainly see no reduction in the number of pangas heading up and down the river. The panga passenger-ferries plying the Rio Chone (operated or licensed by the Armada del Ecuador) are also all still using portable tanks and so, I discovered yesterday, is the Armada del Ecuador itself in its outboard pangas.

Of course, this being Ecuador, you can get your outboard fuel from penny-ante profiteers who sell fuel straight from their truck or car tanks. For a price, of course. Puerto Amistad has always delivered diesel to your boat. The rules to prevent on-selling have actually created an incentive to do exactly what it was intended to stamp out. But the hassle and the price for cruisers coming to Ecuador has just shot up.

No fuel for foreigners at all

Given that retail fuel is subsidised in Ecuador, the Ministry of Petroleum has decided that foreigners cannot benefit from these subsidies. Yachties are now required to pay the full, unsubsidised price the way commercial vessels already do in Guayaquil. God only knows what that price might be. Maybe it is still cheaper than in the USA. But no service station is willing to take on the hassle of running a fuelling station with two sets of prices. One assumes that “foreign” means “foreign-flagged”. Local service stations refuse to get involved. Not that it matters much in Bahía since there is no fuel dock and you can’t buy diesel or gasoline in jugs. Go figure!

One assumes that these are “green table” decisions, i.e., decisions made by distant bureaucrats sitting at green-beige-covered desks without realising the full impact of their deliberations. That’s about the best slant you can put on these stupid rules. The worst is that foreign yachts are being targeted.

New level of government hassle and expense for yachts to cruise in Ecuador

If you think the new rules about portable fuel tanks and subsidised fuel sales are classic green-table decisions, you will love how cruisers are now faced with even more bureaucratic hassle and a sharp increase in prices for entering and leaving Ecuadorian waters.

The Ecuadorian Admiralty has decided that the rules governing the movement of large foreign-flagged commercial freighters, tankers and reefers should now be applied to everybody including private pleasure vessels as well. (The legal basis is “Armada Del Ecuador, Dirección General De La Marina Mercante, ‘Maritime Traffic Information System Ecuador, International Traffic’ (Sitrame) in case you want to look it up in English.)

The first rule has to do with giving prior notice when entering and navigating in Ecuadorian territorial waters (200 nm limit) and getting advance permission. Like their giant brothers, sailboats and trawlers now have to give notice by “electronic mail, telex or telefax” two hours before entering these Ecuadorian waters along with the GPS waypoint where one intends to enter and the anticipated GPS waypoints for every two hours along the anticipated route. Any deviation must be reported promptly by “electronic mail, telex or telefax”. For yachters with no “electronic mail, telex or telefax” aboard, the permission will have to be acquired before leaving the last port. How en route deviations are to be reported is unclear. The prices for marine telex machines has shot up around here.

Never mind that many small pleasure vessels do not carry communications equipment that can reach 200 nm. We certainly don’t! The best we could do on our 35-foot classic wooden sailboat is a VHF radio with a range of about 25 nm. Nor, given the vagaries of winds and currents, are sailboats likely to be able to predict their positions accurately even for a day in advance let alone for the several days needed to traverse that 200 miles or more to reach harbour. The Armada del Ecuador understands the problems with sailboats and will be lenient, says at least Tripp Martin of Puerto Amistad in Bahía, the Bahía agent-designate. Not sure how he knows that.

That brings up another issue. Harbour entry and departure rules that up till now have only been applied to commercial vessels are now to apply to yachts and small private motor vessels as well. Although the Admiralty wants these rules applied, they do not fancy actually having to deal with cruisers themselves: yachts too are now also required to hire an agent. Since there is no agent in Bahía (the nearest one is in Manta, two hours away by taxi), the Port Captain has simply closed the port of Bahía de Caráquez. No entries or departures until there is an agent.

This bureaucratic cha-cha has been going on for several weeks. Foreign-flagged yachts showing up all unawares off the mouth of the Rio Chone from Costa Rica or Panama have been denied entry and denied a pilot. So far we have not seen any Ecuadorian yachts at all although local fishing smacks and pangas go in and out at all times of the day or night. There is even a hot rumour that a yacht claiming an emergency was sent packing. Eventually a couple of yachts got into Bahía after first having to detour to Manta, hire an agent ($150 in their case) plus normal harbour entry fees (lights & buoys, port captain, etc.) to bring the total up to over $200 where it would once have been about $25 (depending upon the size of the boat). They then sailed back to Bahía. Three vessels wishing to put out for French Polynesia or Easter Island in the last weeks were also prevented from leaving for days or weeks because the port captain refused to deal with the yachties. It amounted to a de facto detention. The Port Captain says the rules now require an agent. No agent, no entrada or salida. Forget the fact that there is no agent in Bahía.

For some reason the local Port Captain has apparently also designated Tripp Martin at Puerto Amistad to become the agent. Tripp avers he doesn’t want to take on the job because cruisers will only blame him personally for agency fees. On the other hand, if he does become the agent he intends to make money at it, he announced to cruisers recently.

Although he now seems willing to do the job, getting the agency set up has taken a long time and is still not functioning as this is written. The Bahía agency is to be a sub-agency of Johnny Romero’s agency in The Galapagos.

The new agent-designate however has stated that the agency will be open for business in a few days and he will be charging initially $150 for a return trip into Bahía harbour (i.e. his price is for one round trip entry/exit). Cruisers note that one has to add another $30 each way for the pilot at Bahía (not necessary in Manta or Salinas). Also, many boats sail down to Salinas to use the haul-out facilities and boatyard there. Add the agency fees for each port-of-call and the costs start mounting. As Senator Everett Dirkson once replied to questions about mounting budgets, “A million here, a million there. It begins to add up.” Cruisers are understandably more than a little chagrined.

Tripp says he has no alternative: either he takes on the job or there will be no more boats entering or leaving Bahía at all and his business will be ruined. And, as to prior notification, Tripp says most boaters let him know in advance anyway so he can have the pilot standing by. Leavi9ng aside that only Bahia requires a pilot, cruising boats could show up in the past in the “waiting room” outside the Rio Chone or call on VHF from a few miles out. And surely there is a big difference in kind now between informally contacting Puerto Amistad sometime up to the time of arriving off the port, on the one hand, and getting permission in advance for entering Ecuadorian waters and being compelled to use it as an agent to get the permiso. Since most boaters these days have SSB, ham or onboard email, says Tripp Martin, there’s really no problem.

Puerto Amistad’s aim is to stay in business and make a profit. To do this it needs to provide services to cruisers. Cruisers, by contrast, are trying to keep their costs down, to avoid bureaucratic hassle and maintain their freedom of movement. They do not believe that anyone is taking their interests in all this to heart. The new regulations taken individually or together, they are convinced, will impact tourism in Ecuador negatively. In fact, cruisers are really pissed off. Many are swearing to leave (if and when they can somehow get fuel, and when and if they have the dinero to hire an agent to get a salida/zarpe). Most are saying they have changed their plans and intend not to return as long as these rules are in effect. And every cruiser knows of a few boats that have already opted to stay in Costa Rica or Panama this season rather than risk not being able to get fuel in Ecuador or be saddled with unnecessary agency fees. The word gets around pretty fast.

Some boaters also fear a conflict of interests where Tripp Martin is the agent. Tripp wants to have customers for Puerto Amistad. Wen business gets tougher, who is to say that a boat that declines to use Puerto Amistad while in Bahía will be able to get prompt service or indeed any service when the time comes to clear out?

Bottom line

It is hard to imagine how Ecuador can benefit from this nonsense. Cruising yachts have an urgent need to buy fuel in portable jugs. The new rules actually encourage contraband sales. The principal beneficiaries of subsidised retail fuel in this country are the Ecuadorian car-owners, not surely the neediest people in this country where car ownership numbers are low and basically concentrated amongst the well-to-do classes, not the poor. And surely the costs of administering the unsubsidised sale of less than 5,000 gallons of fuel annually to foreign-flagged yachts is hardly worth the administrative effort.

Boaters, as usual, are discriminated against the way foreign car drivers or foreign airplane passengers are not. Rent a car here and you will get your fuel at local prices. Rent one in Colombia and tank up across the border in Ecuador and you will receive not a moment’s hassle. Drive or fly to Quito or Guayaquil and you might have to sacrifice your nail clippers or knitting needles. But no one will require you to give your GPS waypoints in advance or to acquire permission to enter the country in advance, terrorism or no terrorism. Nor will anyone stipulate that you must use an agent to clear you in. It’s not that other countries never do stupid things like this, of course. I have always for example resented having to pay the US Customs Service $25 annually as a misnamed “User Fee” every calendar year. I don’t want to use them. No car drivers or arriving airline passenger has to pay this stuff. So again, why boats?

Is this goodbye to paradise?

Some of the attraction of making the long side trip to Ecuador has definitely rubbed off. Yes, the weather, the local prices and the people remain the same: benign, low and friendly, respectively.

But budget sailors – aren’t we all? – are set to take a drubbing. There is hassle and much higher costs for entering Ecuador and moving around by boat in the country. Add to this the fact that marina prices are rising much, much faster than local prices (at Puerto Amistad by about 50% per annum whereas price inflation in the country generally is under 5% p.a.). Salinas is shooting up even faster.

Ecuador is not exactly on the major yacht routes. As its charms became known (cheap, temperate, hurricane-free, interesting tourist spots inland, low bureaucratic hassle and, in Bahía at least, personal and property security) the number of cruising boats arriving here has increased in recent years. About 200 boats a year now pass through Salinas and Bahía; most spend at least six months here and spend a lot of money in the country. Now that fewer boaters will be going to The Galapagos under the new regime, Ecuador is even less likely to find itself on the main South Pacific sailing route for cruisers. The rapidly-rising direct boating costs (marinas, etc.), the higher price of fuel and the difficulty of even being able to purchase it are severe disincentives for visiting this country. And don’t forget the expensive obligation to use an agent and to report one’s movements to Big Brother in advance for tracking. Yachties ain’t goin’ to like it. I'll wager they’ll vote with their rudders.

While countries like Mexico and Canada have actually been reducing barriers to boat-born tourism, Ecuador seems to think that all of this will have no effect whatsoever. My bet is that is will have a negative impact.