Literally it means “To leave the anchorage”. Boats need a Zarpe if they leave port and it is made in the port a boat leaves. Some thoughts on the use and abuse of this little piece of paper.
What is a Zarpe?
You need a zarpe in Latin countries to check the boat in when you come to a port. You get it from the port-captain in the port you leave. Most of the time you get this paper for free.
It comes from zarpar and that comes from _xarpar_ (Catalan) and means literally—to take the anchor up—or—the ship leaves the anchorage—.
The essential information on the zarpe is the date and time you are going to leave, the name of the boat and the port of destination.
The date/time of leaving the port and the destination are the important pieces of information.
The date/time of leaving
You are not allowed to be ashore after date/time of leaving. Some officials take this very serious. I’ve been chased of once (in Isla Mujeres, Mexico) and other sailors have comparable stories.
To stay out of trouble, I tell them that we will leave in the evening. This makes it easy to do some last minute things and to get rid of the local money. I never heard any port-captain complain that we left a couple of hours before our planned departure.
The port of destination
I can understand that commercial boats have a port of destination, but we as pleasure-sailors are a different kind of travellers at sea. We want to go easy and it is possible that the weather just doesn’t cooperate with the direction to our port of destination. If there are better alternatives at hand in such a moment, we will choose another port (and sometimes another country as consequence).
An example.
Right now, we are in , an island relatively close to the coast of Nicaragua, but part of Colombia. We want to go to Cartagena de Indias/Colombia. Most of the time this is hard to do as the trade-winds make this an uncomfortable close-hauled trip, but sometimes you get lucky and have the winds in favor.
When we leave from here, we will try, but probably end up going to Portobelo in Panama. From there to the San Blas and then from there to Cartagena.
- What do I say is my destination to the port-captain?
- And what are the consequences of ending up going to another port?
- My experience is that no port-captain will make a hassle that another port of entry was the destination then written on the Zarpe.
- Why is this port of destination on the Zarpe? Can I not say “unknown port of destination”?
- What do sailors that go around the world non-stop have as their port of destination?
In the future I will be a bit more aware of these possibilities and insist on “unknown port of destination”, but I doubt that there is much understanding for my destination attitude.
