Als Teil der Vorbereitung haben wir für 3 Monate ein Spanisch Kursus bei José Hares von der Latin Connection belegt – wird es helfen uns in dieser Sprache ab Mai zurecht zu finden?
The day to containerise the vehicle arrived on Wednesday 23rd of March, all going well we should receive them in Montevideo on the 10th of May. The ship “Cap Cortes” will take the containers to Santos in Brasil from where they get transhipped to Montevideo in Uruguay (www.marine traffic.com is a site that allows easy tacking of a ship from port to port) . Until such time that the vehicles were driven into the Hi-cube container, we weren’t sure that the height would fit – worst case, we would have to take the all boxes on top down. Once in the container, could we still get out of the driver door? As it turned out, this was not possible and the exit through the back was the only way out – luckily we had designed the vehicle so that we can sleep inside in extreme weather conditions where we cannot open the roof tent. There was just enough height for us to crawl through.
For extra protection of the vehicles we added inflatable dunnage bags – for this the container had to be moved through the terminal at SACD in Cape Town to get to a compressed air supply connection- better would have been to bring a compressor along. Once in the container, all the battery connections had to be disconnected. Tanks have to be near empty ( less than quarter) for fire safety aboard ship. We felt great relief once the seal was in place and we aim to witness its removal at destination. Overall shipping duration Cape Town to Montevideo is just over six weeks.
