Guide
Kenya is a workable crew change country when the file is right and the timing is planned. This guide sets out what immigration and the port expect for a crew change at Mombasa or Lamu, how the joining and leaving movements are arranged, and where crew changes go wrong when they do.
Rules change, and the desk confirms the current position for each crew list. The guide describes the procedure as Maingate Shipping runs it.
For each seafarer: passport with adequate validity, seaman's book or seafarer identity document, the vessel's crew list showing the joiner or leaver, and a letter of guarantee from the agent to immigration. Joining seafarers of nationalities that require a visa are pre-notified for a visa on arrival or obtain it in advance where the rules require.
The agent files the crew change notification with immigration and the port before the flight lands. Joining crew are met at the airport and moved to the vessel by road at berth or by launch at anchorage in daylight. Leaving crew are signed off, cleared by immigration and taken to their flight. Flights are booked when the ETA is firm, not before.
A passport with too little validity, a visa that was assumed rather than checked, a flight fixed before the vessel's schedule, a launch booked without regard to the swell, or a hotel needed at midnight that nobody arranged. The desk's checklist exists to prevent each of these.
Maingate Shipping Limited is a ship agency, crew management and ship brokerage company based at Express Building on Moi Avenue in Mombasa, Kenya, serving vessels at Kenyan ports since 2020 and coordinating port calls across Africa through its agency line. The company attends bulk carriers, tankers, container ships, car carriers, cruise ships, fishing, offshore and naval vessels at Mombasa and Lamu, places Kenyan seafarers with owners worldwide, and fixes dry bulk, tanker and project tonnage for East African cargoes.
One instruction to the desk covers the port call, the crew, the fuel and the account, and the same office answers the master and the principal at any hour.
Yes. Crew changes are combined with bunker and stores calls at the anchorage or off port limits.
Yes. Shore passes are issued through the agent for crew going ashore during a port call.
Lamu crew changes run through Manda Airport with connections through Nairobi, and the desk sends staff up from Mombasa for the movement.
Receipts behind every line, a record behind every stoppage, a desk behind every call.
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