Things never go exactly as planned when you do an international move, and our latest one is a good example of that. The Chinese moving company had told us that they had reserved space on a vessel that would leave Shanghai on March 2 and would arrive about 2 weeks later in Vancouver (our goods were packed and custom cleared 4 days before the shipment date already). But when we checked on March 5 it turned out that for some reason the container had not been loaded. However, the moving company told us that they would try to put the container on a boat to Vancouver on March 9.
So we waited until March 9, but did not receive a confirmation that the container had left China. After a call to our moving company we heard that some administrative documents were missing so the container again had not been loaded. Now I was getting a bit worried. Things sometimes go wrong with containers, and when it’s a container with all your personal possessions and you are already on the other side of the world you prefer to hear something different.
But what can you do? Fly back to sort it out yourself? That might help but it’s not guaranteed, so it’s more a last resort if nothing else works. At least the moving company was now focusing on the case and indeed a few days later we received the message that our container had been loaded on the Ever Uberty, a Singaporean cargo ship en route to Vancouver. I immediately started following the ship on MarineTraffic.com and saw that it made good progress in the direction of North America. Our Canadian company told us that the vessel would arrive in Vancouver on March 29 and they sent me the confirmation that it had arrived on the 29th. So when I checked the ship’s status last Friday I was very surprised that the ship had sailed to Tacoma (close to Seattle in the US) instead of to Vancouver…
Memories of a similar experience with a container in the early 1980s came to mind, when I moved with my parents and sister from The Netherlands to Curacao (an island in the Caribbean), and for some reason our container ended up in New York. We had to live in a hotel for 3 months until everything had been sorted out…
Anyway, because of Good Friday the moving company was not working, so I could not check with them and would have to wait until Monday. This afternoon I checked MarineTraffic again, and guess what? The Ever Uberty had left Tacoma this morning at 2:33 AM and arrived in Vancouver about 10 hours later! Very happy to see that, so I don’t need to bother the moving company – although I will certainly ask them why they gave me the wrong info.
Now we have to handle the custom clearance in Canada, which should take a couple of days and then the moving company will bring the big container to our home. We’re looking forward to finally getting all our goods and to be able to decorate our new house.