If you are trying to enter the Maldives via Uligamo, we would like to recommend an agent here.
His name is Asadhulla Mohamed, called Asad for short. All communication in advance was straightforward and clear, with all the questions he could help us. He brought us the quarantine, immigration and customs officials on board.

All formalities were conducted quickly and easily under his management – and the official formalities are quite extensive, to say the least. If you do not have an onboard stamp on hand, make sure your right thumb stays blue until you leave.

Asad proved to be a very hospitable agent, with good and valuable information for us. He was always helpful and refreshingly uncomplicated until we left, supporting us in all matters.

We would like to recommend Asad here. I look for a reliable agent in Uligamo: it`s Asad!

If you want to contact him: assad@realseahawksmaldives.com

We used Ship Care as an agent in Male for entry and exit. one of the owner Afrah is a good man and even elected as some official but still spent the time to meet us. The operation is by his colleague. The agency fee and the charges had been raised a bit comparing to the charges posted by the previous sailor.

We are a 58ft Tanya monohull and with the final charge of USD1000 including the agency fee, mooring, cruising permits (for 1 month while we only stayed 1 week). The service from Ship Care is acceptable. However, in getting the water, it had been charged a bit high comparing high with add on. We paid for the first time of 1 ton through the agent at USD110 while we directly ordered the water for the 2nd time at USD50.

In March 2017 we will have been in Maldives 2 years. We have paid many “school fees” by dealing with the wrong people, simply because its impossible to tell real experts from the wannabe experts. With hindsight, the key to cruising Maldives is to select the right agent in the first place. That in itself is no easy task, because whilst they are trying to get your business, all agents promise the world.

Once you have the right agent then life gets easier, because he will put you onto the right suppliers and give you the shortcuts. Unfortunately, once we signed up with our selected agent the reality was a nightmare. The main issue was that one cannot terminate or change agents without a letter of no objection FROM THE AGENT HIMSELF.

This left us in a catch 22 situation, and we paid dearly for that letter, allowing us to change agents. After 2 false starts with the wrong agents, we found SHIP CARE MALDIVES, a fairly new agency run by Afrah and Hanoon. (info@shipcaremaldives.com) After 3 months I was confident enough in their service levels to post a reference on noonsite. It has now been 6 months and I have been impressed that they have maintained, if not improved their service levels.

Afrah and Hanoon are fluent in English and have a very good idea of what servicing a client really means. No task is too much trouble and they have gone the extra mile for me numerous times. Please feel free to mail me if you need any info.

When we entered the Maldives we experienced a lot of Technical problems. All which have been resolved thanks to a contact who was given to us by some friends. This guy is not an agent he is someone who helps the sailing community with their problems.

We really can recommend this person. If you need a spare part or an engineer, electrician whatsoever he will organise it for you. (Most of the spare parts are available in Male) He sends you a copy of the selling price and he put a small service charge on top of it. We paid him a very moderate and acceptable fee for all his efforts and stayed in communication during our whole trip. Just before leaving to chagos we experienced another technical problem which required our immediate attention.

The spare part was delivered to us just in a day. Thanks, Badeeu for all what you have done for us. For anyone who is interested in contacting him here is his phone number. 7527312

Our experience was that Assad was great in Uligan, but Rasheed was the worst of the worst. He represents Advandfort security contractor, so as long as you use them, he’ll help you, but we had a different contractor and he made our life’s very difficult, lied to us about the storage costs until the day before we were meant to embark the weapons, where he upped our quote $11,000. In the end, we luckily found another weapons owner and agent that was much more reliable and trustworthy.

I’d recommend Abdul Hannan from Antrac (ahannan@antracmaldives.com) who has agents in Uligan as well. He’s well connected and been in the business many more years than Rasheed.