Sailing to remote Atoll and refused entry A TRICKY Check In as The World SHUT DOWN Begins ! Majuro to Maloelap EP70 After 6 weeks in Majuro we utilise our outer atoll cruising permits and head north to Maloelap atoll to do some exploring . The journey starts out quite lively with twenty five knot winds on the beam and a confused sea state which makes life a tad uncomfortable. We have a busy night sail with a few squalls keeping interesting and not conducive to a nights sleep for those off-watch. Over the course of the night the wind drops off , so we motor the last couple of hours to the pass on the south side of Maloelap Atoll. We head up to Taroa Island on the north east corner of the atoll and wait for another 35 knot squall to pass before putting the hook down in front of the village. Later in the day we are greeted by the local policeman who comes to the back of DT in one of the villages long boats. There was an announcement from the prime minister that morning banning all international travel to the Marshall islands. Confusion abounds ... Can we stay? Do we have to turn back ? Footage from March 2020 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ☕️ Want to Buy us a Coffee? Support our videos: https://ko-fi.com/sailingdoubletrouble 🌎 Blogs and updates on the website: http://sailingdoubletrouble.com/ 💁🏼‍♀️ Photos and real time stuff here: https://www.facebook.com/sailingdoubletrouble/ 📷 Random Travel Pics and updates: https://www.instagram.com/sailingdoubletrouble/ 👉Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/SailingDoubleTrouble?sub_confirmation=1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 👩‍❤️‍👨About us : Hello and welcome to our channel! We are Jo and Rob and we are here to share our sailing adventures with you. In 2016, inspired by the likes of ‘Delos’, ‘Sailing La Vagabonde’ and ‘Gone with The Wynns’, we sold up everything we owned and bought our 40ft, Fountaine Pajot ‘Lipari 41 Evo’ sailing catamaran ‘Double Trouble’. We had no sailing experience whatsoever, so the past few years have been a huge learning curve. We thought it might be fun to document our travels for anyone thinking of following a similar lifestyle. So far we have visited 7 different countries and sailed over 13,000 nautical miles. We have had many unique experiences that would not have been possible in our prior life and we don’t regret a second. We're both super keen on protecting our precious environment, so amongst other things, we both follow a plant based diet. You wont find any fishing footage on this channel! Subscribe now and join us as we continue our salty travels around the world. https://www.youtube.com/c/SailingDoubleTrouble?sub_confirmation=1 👏Credits: Thanks to 'Shure ' microphones for voiceover sound. 🎼Music: DT Theme tune - 'Happy' by MBB https://soundcloud.com/mbbofficial Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/g6swHZbWtRc 🎧Other Music: Epidemic Sound Library #sailingdoubletrouble MaloelapAtoll

Closed Captions (CC):
morning it is sunday the 8th of march

here in majoro

and we have been here for almost two

months and today

we have wind in our favor we are heading

out of here we're going to head up to an

atoll called

malolap so we're going to be gone for

about four or five weeks

and yeah very much looking forward to it

it's uh it's been a while since we've uh

we're done really sailing hasn't it

right yeah and rob was just doing a bit

of troubleshooting our iridium wasn't

working this morning so

how's that going it's going good it's

working now we've had some computer

issues while we've been here so our main

machine

has uh broken and we've basically moved

all one predicament over to this

corral so we can get the weather and

emails and everything while we're up

there

no data no phone connection no shops

off the grid for the next four or five

weeks yeah

yeah looking forward to it

[Music]

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just making our way across the lagoon

yes we are dead down wind at the moment

and we haven't even got the sail set and

we're doing five

knots because we've got up to 30 knots

of wind behind us

um so it might be a little bit faster

when we get out of the pass

and then go on to more of a beam range

our first

third wreath in over a year yeah we've

got the sail reef with three ready

because we think uh

i think it might be a little bit breezy

out there could all predict wind

um yeah so we'll just see what we get

but we're at the moment we're just

gently

downwind cruising across the lagoon it's

most pleasant

back on the ocean swell we are a little

bit uh

confused but in fairness we're coming

across a lot of um

depth contours at the moment we've just

come out of the uh

lagoon but it's um yeah we're trying to

go slowly

we've got two reefs in it we're doing

six and a half knots which is called the

law of salt

so we just shook the third reef out

because we were doing 4.8

and now we're um we're going a little

bit too quickly i suppose it means we

can slow down this evening and have a

bit of a quiet night

uh yeah dreamworks all i can say when

we're beating in this direction but yeah

it's nicely on the beam which is nicely

uncomfortable

yeah it's only an overnighter it's going

to be what about 20 hours

not too far

yeah that's a little bit crazy so there

is a weather system that

has just passed behind us we've just had

the 35

touching 40 knots and um

confused c so we just put another wreath

in

we'll calm back down

i just said to joe oh it looks like

that's a rain cloud i can't see anything

on the radar

whoosh

first night shift in two months which we

shook a reef out

and then we put the reef back in because

we're going too fast

these uh short passages are really

frustrating we basically want to be at

the pass

of malola lap in the morning and

we were due to arrive at about four in

the morning if we kept going so we've

slowed the boat down

uh it's helped a little bit the sea

state here is uh

a little bit washing machiney every

tenth wave is a big one

so it's uh it's helping keep things a

bit calm

on the boat hopefully we'll have no

squalls

and it'll be a lovely quiet night

so much for no squalls apparently

uh 27 to 33 knots

and uh we're triple reefed

doing a sedate five knots

how you enjoying the party honey oh god

it's just an overnighter because it's

just it's flashing with rain we've got a

napkin of sail out

it's washing the salt of the world

taking the three massive great waves

right over the top of the boat

it's challenging turning between these

islands isn't it yeah

oh hey never mind we'll be there in

10 hours 12 12 hours

to the past and then two hours across

the lagoon

it's uh 2 30 in the morning and

the seas have calmed considerably we are

in the lee of our island

now swell has reduced greatly rub this

down hopefully having a good sleep

um our eta is around about half past

nine um we've still got three roofs in

the main we might have to shake one soon

because we've only got 13 knots

of breeze we're still trucking along at

about four and a half knots

we don't want to be um malolap

too early uh number one we need some

light to go through the pass

and number two we're trying to time the

slack tide which is

10 o'clock which will make things a wee

bit easier the first

eight hours of the journey were pretty

messy some pretty big season

the winds were a lot higher than

forecast

but now like i say we're getting

probably 15 16 knots

and i think it's work has to stay pretty

much like that

for the rest of the trip we should be in

like i say about

9 15. good morning

it is 6 30 the sun is just coming up

we are passing the northern tip of our

island it's just over there

a couple of miles away and about to turn

to head towards the pass at malalap

island the wind has fallen off

completely we have seven knots at the

moment we've just been bobbing around

for the last hour or so joe's catching

up on some sleep

but i think it is time for us to turn

the engines on

and uh the direction we're going in is

essentially got the wind on the nose so

we're going to drive for the next couple

of hours

and by then the sun should be up and we

should have a nice

view into the past

[Music]

welcome to another atoll yes we are up

to my lower lap

wind's dropped off to about 15 knots

which is good and we're just picking our

way

well we're going to kind of go south

east and then come back up

north west haven't we so to avoid a few

bombings now we should anchor down in a

couple of hours hopefully another school

i think we're definitely in the

convergence zone having come up to

malaya i don't know why i've got my

sunglasses on quite frankly

no because it ain't sunny anymore

because we can't see to get into the

about 35 anchorage

[Music]

so we're anchored down in

tarawa in maloa lap yeah and we've just

had a visit from one of the villagers

yeah they've just come out in the long

boats and they asked

where we'd come from and i said majoro

and they then said the prime minister

what is it a prime minister i don't know

yeah prime minister prime minister has

just done

a um an order

saying that travel to outer islands

due to coronavirus is banned we think

which we didn't know when we set off

yesterday we have got a permit who just

doesn't say that we're free of

coronavirus we have a permit to visit

uh but uh we're trying to work out

they're gonna check

with their mayor who's based in measure

and just confirm what the prime minister

has said

uh and whether or not because we we've

heard overnight

that uh they've they're stopping

uh people arriving by plane uh

and they've got some limits on

international ships visiting

so we would assume that if we've we've

come from

uh an atoll and we've already been here

for a while

but it hasn't got coronavirus that we

could still then visit

here but we've been asked to stay on the

boat today

and they'll either let us know later

today or tomorrow whether or not we can

go shop

this coronavirus thing is getting crazy

eh yeah

interesting let's wait and see how it

pans out eh that's

so it's the end of what turned out to be

quite a long day isn't it

yes a long 24 hours getting up here from

measure

and we've had two visits from the local

policemen

today so update us the first one was

where you can't come in you've got

coronavirus you've come from majora

yeah they they needed to double check

with the mayor because they've just

brought in some new

legislation over the weekend

regarding coronavirus so they

checked with the mayor and came back and

said yeah you're free to

come ashore there's no problem with

coronavirus can we look at your permit

so we showed them the permit and it was

signed by the mayor

that was in power the term before so in

january when we got it signed

in february they got a new mayor so

they then said oh you can't come ashore

yet

we need to check with the new mayor that

your permit is still valid because it's

got the old signature on it

so they've we've just heard back from

internal affairs

and the new mayor would be delighted if

we went ashore

uh and uh if there's any problem then we

have his

uh home phone number so that the local

policemen can call them

and the home phone number will be all

well and good if there was any phone

reception on the island

there is that so they've got an ssb here

and we've got satellite obviously but

um i don't know how much a major uh

mobile number would cost us we were

asked to stay on the boat no swimming

and uh but we still have to go

and talk to the policemen so it's a bit

of a catch-22

how do we go ashore uh and see the

policeman when we've been told by him to

stay on the boat but i'm sure it will

work itself out

the problem of going ashore the next

morning was sold when the local police

came to us

this guy he's a british man

okay

from uh arrival here was in early march

2020

and the covert 19 virus was rapidly

spreading throughout the world

in the 24 hour since we had left majaro

the marshall islands government had

begun to implement stringent

inbound travel restrictions to try and

keep the virus out of this tiny remote

country

this meant that there was a heightened

awareness amongst the locals of any

visitors to the atoll

and they were naturally very cautious

about our arrival

once we made it clear that we had in

fact been in the country since early

january

and posed no sort of health threat then

the local authorities

visibly relaxed they viewed our permits

approved the email from the new mayor

and checked our proof of measles

immunity

we were finally given the all clear to

go ashore and begin exploring the

islands of the

okay come on oh do you have any guns

gonna kind of smoke oh spiders

oh

[Laughter]

thank you

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