Now that everything has ended well and we are in Moscow, I can calmly reconstruct the events from conversations with our diplomatic mission, the captain of the vessel and the agent, and of course from personal impressions. Mauritius is open to tourism, as the international site https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/world.php shows. Those arriving by air simply have to take a test, self-isolate for 2 weeks and take a test again. For yachts, which are in self-isolation by definition (in our case 4 weeks), the protocol provides for a test and then entry into port. A month before arrival we asked the port authorities whether we could enter, and they confirmed. A week before, when the route could still be changed, we asked again and they confirmed again.
As in the joke, there was a catch: permission to land had to be given personally by the Prime Minister. Only the agent decided to cut corners. Instead of collecting the papers and sending them to the Prime Minister for signature, he decided to do it all quietly, bypassing him. As a result, early in the morning we entered the port, passed customs (with a dog) and border control, handed over our passports and relaxed… Meanwhile the harbour master arrived, saw that they were about to stamp the papers without the Prime Minister’s signature, and was angered.
The Prime Minister was angered next. The situation was a stalemate: he could neither let us in at once and save face nor expel us from the port (our stocks of food, water and fuel were running out). In the end we were given the sourest face possible: we had to hand in our tickets (there is one flight a week), hang about on the roadstead for 9 days, take another coronavirus test and only then fly to Moscow.
While on the roadstead aboard the yacht, we of course did not suspect this mechanism. The science group kept night watches (the crew needed to get some sleep); from the morning we corresponded with the agent and the embassy, and were covered with a light blanket of optimism to the effect that the matter was being resolved. By lunchtime the situation became tense and the hope that we would be let in today melted away. After three in the afternoon we relaxed: their working day ends at 16:00, so clearly they would not let us in. This Groundhog Day lasted a week, and at some point I prepared to see in the New Year in Mauritius, as I had 32 years before. But suddenly, on Thursday evening, we were allowed to enter the port, to take the test on Friday morning and to fly out on Saturday, a week later.
The whole absurdity of the situation is illustrated by the procedure for taking the coronavirus test. The photo on the left shows the queue at the entrance to the building. Once inside, you had to sweat it out in three more adjoining rooms; the photo on the right shows the last, final room. After it there were only two small queues, one for payment and one for the test itself.
After all these queues, in a crush and without masks, the Mauritian Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted that the three of us (already 5 weeks in isolation and with second negative tests) be sent to the airport in two cars (they seem to have some trouble with arithmetic) with a flashing light. In the end they sent one large car without a flashing light and drove us briskly to the plane.
On the yacht we left the plankton net, a stock of alcohol (which we managed to buy in Mauritius) and jars for new samples, and a trained crew. So the deep-sea expedition continues!
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