Japan Cruising September 2009

Created by sue. Last modified on 2009-09-22 15:44:45
Countries: Japan

This is an excerpt from Ken Williams blog who is currently cruising Japan with 2 other yachts.

There are not many marinas are, and most of those that do exist target much smaller boats. There are plenty of ports, but the ports are closed to us, unless:

a) We hire an expensive agent to clear us into the port ($600 a boat)

Or,

b) Enter the port without an agent, and beg for forgiveness, and hope they let us stay. We did that yesterday, and it created a lot of problems. We spent hours working through the red tape, but were allowed to stay.

We're back underway as I type this. We've decided to do long days, and find anchorages along the way. If this works we'll be into Osaka by Monday. The problem with anchorages is that we just aren't finding many, and we have very limited information. Most cruising guides are in Japanese. I have some paper charts, but these aren't very detailed. Nobletec has no depths for most of the bays. Navnet 3 has no charts whatsoever for this area.

We found a couple of anchorages we are 99% certain will be fine, but we won't know for sure until we get there. Sometimes the bays are loaded with fishing nets...

Japan is worldclass cruising, but cruising here with three large boats, during typhoon season, as a non-japanese speaker, is "difficult".