Original text by: Remmo Niezen, edited by Graham Callaway (Driftpromotion.com)
It was planned that our container should be loaded and put on the ship
on Wednesday. Unfortunately we suddenly encountered a not so friendly
customs official who decided that our shipping documents were not in
order and blocked the container from loading. We found this strange
because we had everything double checked by the transport company.
Apparently, one signature was missing. If he had bothered to phone us
we could have solved the problem within 10 minutes and given him a
signature. As it was, they didn’t bother to phone until the ship was
already gone and our container sat by itself on the loading area.
I won’t describe what I said at that moment, but it’s certainly
something I can’t mention here..!!..
The last 2 days we’ve been busy looking at other possibilities to get
our cars to the States and we seem to have found a solution.
Shipping direct to LongBeach takes too long. Another new solution is
to drop the container in Savannah, and that will save us time because
the
ship doesn’t need to carry our container all the way around to
Longbeach. Problem is, we are then on the wrong side of the USA.
It’s a very tight schedule and may not go wrong at any stage, but our
transport agent says it can be done.
Our container leaves on Tuesday and will go directly to Savannah but
somehow our cars have to get over to the west coast.
2 truck drivers will be standing by to drive across the States meaning
a journey of no less than 5000Km for delivery in LongBeach.
They say it can be there by the 12th, maybe a little earlier.
It’s absolutely crazy, and several times I had to ask myself “What the
hell are we doing?” Paul Vlasblom wanted to quit based on his bad
experiences last year at Irwindale and I was almost ready to agree
after this latest setback.
After a lot of discussion with Paul en Mr Pieter Poppelaars of RR
Holland who organised and paid almost all the transport for us, we
decide to go for it.
If there’s no headwind, the captain doesn’t get sick, the ship’s
engine is OK or it doesn’t capsize we just might make it to the east
coast,
I don’t even want to think about the road journey from Savannah to LongBeach..
If we make it..we will see you guys in Longbeach.
- Remmo Niezen /Paul Vlasblom.
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