Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 97 21:50:12 EDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         jag@cs.rochester.edu
Subject:      Re: Shipping van to Europe

Tim wrote about the problems you can get when leaving your westy
in the hands of a shipping company. I have been thinking of the
following solution:

  * Drive to a port.

  * Check around for ships going to Europe.

  * Ask the captain how much he wants to take me and my Westy with him
    as deck cargo. (Some freighters have extra cabins not used by
    the crew)

I've noticed that the crew on russian ships quite often bring used
cars back to Russia this way.

I can also offer to work. In fact asking to work might be a
more normal way, and the captain might be less confused.

Since shipping a van like this is most likely not the ordinary
business of the shipping line, I'll most likely be out of luck
if something goes wrong. But on the other hand, the big plus
is that I'll be there the whole time to make sure my Westy is
not mistreated when it is lifted on board, and I can tie
it down myself.

Also if (like in Tim's case) the ship is rerouted, and/or
laid up somewhere different from the original destination, 
I can just start my trip from there. 

I don't think having the van as deck cargo is dangerous for
it provided it can be placed either on the rear half, or protected
behind something. I've been up on deck on the Sweden-England Ferry 
and even during pretty bad storms not much water breaks over the the 
rear parts.
 
Some problems I can already anticipate:

1/ US and Canadian ports are likely to have many fences and gates between
me and the ship, so to drive my westy to the docks to look for
ships and captains might be difficult. I will have to figure
out how to persuade the security and customs to let me in.

2/ Coming into Europe in a not-so-usual way might cause interesting
problems with customs and other officials.

In a smaller port it might be easier to get to the docks but on the other
hand an bigger poet will likely have more ships going to Europe.

So what do you think? Any suggestions of good ports to ask around?
(Or even better does anyone have connections in the shipping
industry?) 

/Martin
--
Martin Jagersand                 email: jag@cs.rochester.edu
Computer Science Department             jag@cs.chalmers.se
University of Rochester 

        Slow down and visit the VW diesel Westy page:
          WWW: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/jag/vw
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