Crew logistics
Kenya is a natural crew change country for vessels trading the East African coast and the Indian Ocean. Mombasa has an international airport twenty minutes from the port, direct flights to the Gulf and Europe through Nairobi, and a port that accepts crew changes at berth and at anchorage. Lamu is the second option on the northern coast for vessels calling there.
Maingate Shipping runs crew changes for owners and managers whether or not we are the cargo agent for the call. As a protecting agent or a crew-only appointment, we handle the immigration file, meet the crew at the airport, move them to the vessel by road and launch, and return the departing crew to their flights.
Immigration in Kenya expects the crew list, passports and seafarer documents in advance, a letter of guarantee from the agent, and confirmed onward travel for signing-off crew. Where a joining seafarer needs a visa on arrival, the desk pre-notifies the airport. We file these before the flight lands so that nobody waits at the desk.
At berth, the crew goes through the port gate with the agent's pass and is walked to the gangway. At anchorage, we book a licensed launch and time it against the swell and the pilot's movements. Where a flight lands after the last launch, a hotel near the port is booked and the transfer runs at first light.
Vessels on passage between the Gulf, the Cape and the Far East can make an off-port-limits crew change at Mombasa without entering the port. The vessel slows outside the limits, the launch meets it with the joining crew and takes off the leavers, and the vessel is under way again within a couple of hours.
This desk is part of Maingate Shipping Limited, the Mombasa ship agency, crewing and brokerage house that has attended vessels at Kenyan ports since 2020 from its office at Express Building, Moi Avenue. Port agency at Mombasa and Lamu is handled by the company's own boarding officers; calls elsewhere in Africa run through the Maingate agency line under one DA format and one reporting style; Kenyan seafarers are recruited and managed from the same office; and the chartering desk fixes the tonnage that brings East Africa its wheat, fertilizer, clinker and fuel.
Principals deal with one desk for the whole voyage, and every service is agreed in writing before it is performed.
A few working days is comfortable for most nationalities; longer where visas must be obtained in advance. The desk confirms the requirement for each nationality when the crew list is received.
Yes. Licensed launches work the anchorage in daylight and in acceptable weather, and off-port-limits changes are done outside the port for vessels in transit.
Moi International Airport at Mombasa for regional and some international flights, and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at Nairobi for the widest choice of long-haul connections, with road or domestic flight transfer between the two.
One instruction, one account, one contact for the master and one for the principal.
Related desks on the same instruction line.
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Maingate Shipping Limited · Express Building, Moi Avenue, Mombasa, Kenya · ops@maingateshipping.com · +254 784 622 091