Friday, January 30, 2015

Where is our sea shipment?

It's been quiet lately here in the U.S., not because life has been quiet (see under: hospital visits, Florida, demanding editors, house in chaos), but because it's been just a touch busy.

Meanwhile, we are living in a bit of suspended animation because our sea shipment, which we thought we'd have long before now, has been delayed by some kind of labor work slowdown on the West Coast of the U.S.

I took it upon myself to track the ship, just to get a sense of where it might be. It's amazing how much Google will find for you, especially if you're not in a country where the whole Internet thing is a little threatening. Sorry, China folks.

Anyway, I learned the container ship that holds our container (and that of about a gazillion other people) made multiple stops in the last two months: out of Tianjin, to Busan, South Korea; Kobe, Japan; Nagoya, Tokyo, Vancouver, Seattle, Oakland, LA. Right now, as far as I can tell the NYK Meteor has left the LA port and is heading to the Panama Canal.

How do I know this? I found various trackers. First I got a cute photo of our ship:

(See the container on the very last row, kind of balancing off the back of the ship? Why do I think that's the one that holds our coffee table, cat carrier, vacuum cleaner, coffee maker, and deviled egg plate? Because it's the way my mind works.)

And then I found something even cooler: a map that shows the exact spot where our ship is now, heading down past Mexico to the Panama Canal:

If that's true, progress is being made.
After it sails through the Panama Canal, it's supposed to stop in Manzanillo, Panama, and then up to Savannah, Georgia and Norfolk. After that, it's supposed to be offloaded and trucked to Baltimore, and then will swing back south again and arrive at our doorstep.

Bob and I joke that by the time our sea shipment arrives, we may well be ready to leave again, so we'll just have them reload it to somewhere else.