Be prepared for delays.
The Theory
I decided for a RoRo sea transport from Hamburg, Germany, to Halifax, Canada, with Seabridge, a broker for world wide RV sea transportation. The actual transport is carried-out on one of Grimaldi´s RoRo ships. Grimaldi operates the Hamburg to Halifax route with two scheduled ships.
Upon completion of a shipment request you will receive a quote for your vehicle from Seabridge within 24h. If you are happy with the quote you can instantly proceed with the booking. The booking can be canceled at any time before the drop-off date in Hamburg.
Approximately six weeks prior to departure you will receive an information package from Seabridge with details about when and where to drop-off the vehicle in the port of Hamburg. The countdown for the transportation starts. However, the six weeks are plenty to sort-out the vehicle insurance for Canada/USA as well as to take care for your personel travel arrangements.
The drop-off date is usually between three and five days before the ship is leaving the port. It took for me less than one hour on a Monday afternoon to complete the whole procedure in Hamburg.
When the ship is sailing with your vehicle on board you will receive from Seabridge an invoice for your shipment. Seabridge will mail the freight papers when they have received your money. Without such papers you will not be able to get your vehicle out of the port in Hallifax.
The Reality
By mid of Jan 2019 I was notified by Seabridge that the drop-off date in Hamburg will be 14 March 2019 and ETA of the ship in Halifax will be 01 April.
With mail from 01 March the drop-off date moved to 20 March 2019 and ETA Hallifax moved to 05 April. I dropped my Landrover in Hamburg according to this schedule.
Already expecting that the ship is sailing across the Atlantic I received another email. New ETA Halifax 06 April. Well even this date did not materialize since I received another schedule change.
The ship Atlantic Sail has a problem with its rudder and needs urgent repair. The ship will offload all freight in Antwerpen and the ship Atlantic Sea, just sailing from Hallifax to Hamburg, shall takeover the shipment with a new ETA Halifax 21 April.
Someone within Grimaldi´s headquaters had some mercy and ordered the ship Grande Senegal from Africa to Antwerpen. This ship now transports the vehicle from Antwerpen to Hallifax with a communicated ETA of 17 April. However, the AIS ship tracker shows that the Grande Senegal is not expected in Halifax before 19 April.
Finally she made it on Good Friday 19 April at 09:45 local time.
DiD I SAY SHE MADE IT?
The emails I received from Seabridge stated that the car will arrive on the Grande Senegal in Halifax. But the car was not loaded on this vessel and only arrived in Halifax with the Atlantic Sail on Wednesday 24 April. That following day I received the temporary import clearance from customs and I was ready to go to pick-up the car.
At the Ceres port offices I needed to collect the Document of Delivery and learned that my car was not registered on the loading documents neither of the Grande Senegal nor on the Atlantic Sail. Because I was constantly questioning in various offices the whereabout of my car the Ceres guys started to search for it. Hence they could not find it in their port they had a second look into the belly of the Atlantic Sail. Here the car was hiding in a corner. If nobody had searched for vehicle it had happily sailed the on the next leg to the USA.
