Ship Ahoy!

The past few days have been pretty exciting times here in the Terrell household, particularly yesterday and today.  It’s been another one of those let’s-check-to-see-where-she’s-at periods.  I’ll cut to the chase.  It’s Thursday September 17th and our ship is in Leixões possibly unloading our household goods right now!  But before I get ahead of myself, there’s a lot more to share than that.

This past weekend, one of my main tasks was to compile all of the original documents I’d obtained while in the US and Portugal related to customs requirements.  We definitely do not want to pay 23% VAT on the value of our household goods and we’d already received notice that AT (the Portuguese Tax Authorities) had said the copies of our documents look good, they just need to see the originals.  (That silence you hear is me pausing to knock on wood and cross my fingers and toes that AT remains satisfied with our documents.).

On Tuesday morning I received the contact information for the broker in Portugal that is handling everything and, after an interesting attempt at a phone call (one of which was successful the other was not), I managed to reach the agent and his assistant and arranged to head into Maia (north of Porto, near the Leixões Port) to drop off our original documents.

Getting there was no problem because it was very near the Matosinhos IKEA that we’ve driven to several times.  As is typical for  Portugal right now, the team is working 50% at home 50% in the office, rotating every two weeks.  So we dropped off our documents with Sandra (José was working from home).  After another broker reviewed the documents and said they looked good, we chatted a bit with Sandra and took advantage of being near IKEA (not all IKEAs have the same stuff).

By the time we got home we had one of our main questions answered.  You see, a couple of days earlier the CAP Jackson had departed Morocco and stopped off at Valencia, Spain.  And on the day we were at Garland Import & Export, she was on her way to Italy.  We had suspected something was up, because the CAP Jackson’s route did not take it by Leixões.  So we asked Sandra what the name of the ship would be and she said she’d check and e-mail us the name.

Right then our favorite ship in the world became the Hansa Neuberg, flying under the Liberian flag (how appropriate)!  And she was, at that moment, in port loading our household goods.

The next morning she was still in port, so I decided to plot her route.  She was headed directly from Tangier to Leixões, just north of Porto.

I had a bunch of work to do, so every so often I would bring up Marine Traffic and see if she was in port.  Finally, she headed out and I got her in the Straight of Gibraltar.

As you can see, there’s a lot of traffic heading in and out, and she’d pass Spain before she got to Portuguese waters.  I was going to post a story I read the other day about a pod of killer whales in that Portugal/Spanish waters that have been attacking boats, but given our experience with the CAP Jackson, I didn’t want to jinx the Hansa Neuburg.

By the end of my work day the Hansa Neuburg was rounding the southwest corner of Portugal and about to head northward.  

By the time we got up the next morning, she wasn’t really that far away.  Below you can see where she was in relation to the port, and where we’re located.

The trip had really just taken about one day.

Even better, Ann was able to make a short video of her trip!

Again, I was back to work finishing up a legal memo and periodically checked in on her progress.

As much as I’d have liked to track her going into Porto de Leixões, I had to focus on work, so by the time I checked again, she was already docked.  No waiting around this time!

So here she is, unloading our household goods so they can go through customs.

When we asked Sandra about when the container might get delivered to our home, she explained with a worried look on her face that it would probably take a couple of days to clear customs and get things sorted.  When I said, “So probably some time next week, Monday, Wednesday or so?”, she said “Yes!” and looked relieved.  

So with any luck, next week it is.  Everything will get delivered and Ann will have lots and lots to keep her busy while I’m writing briefs!  My money is on Ann opening the box with her cast-iron cookware before anything else.