We recently re-visited Tobago (arriving from Bequia and anchoring in Stonehaven Bay) and found the Scarborough authorities very helpful. Undoubtedly the process is time consuming and there are a lot of forms to fill in. It’s also important to have all the paperwork from check-out at your previous port (e.g. including the small slip provided by St Vincent Immigration on departure). And, to avoid overtime charges it’s important to arrive (drop anchor) within Customs’ working hours. At Immigration we explained that we wanted to stay in Tobago for 1 week before sailing to Trinidad (Chaguaramas) for summer lay-up. We were given 3 month entry stamp and told to return before leaving for Trinidad.
At Customs we were asked if we wanted to “bay hop”. We opted to stay in the South Western zone covered by Scarborough, listing Stonehaven Bay as our anchorage for the week. If we had wanted to anchor north of Plymouth we would have had to go through the process and transfer our papers to Charlotteville as described below for Trinidad – not worth the hassle for just a week’s stay.
Before leaving for Trinidad we visited Immigration, who gave us a sealed copy of our papers, and Customs who stamped our form – a very quick process.
When we arrived in Chaguaramas we made sure we got there in working hours and took our papers to Immigration and Customs – again a quick process.
Our impression in both Scarborough and Chaguaramas was that the authorities are trying harder (compared to our experience in 2015) to make what is a complicated process as painless as possible.