Taking a freighter across the Atlantic Ocean

• Posted on noflytri
• in Adventure, Boats, USA
• on July 10, 2015
• No Comments.

So, it’s almost time. And indeed, a few hours after posting this it will have already begun…

The Voyage to Belgium (rejected title for Star Trek IV). Not quite home, but pretty damn close. In my mind I’m still half expecting something to go wrong. Some unnecessary complication, despite travelled this way now once before (see here) it still feels a very dodgy way to go but everything is lined up and I’m looking forward to getting settled in my cabin. The Independent Pursuit is on schedule waiting in Wilmington’s port. The cab to take me there is on its way. Once again you can track my voyage by searching for the position of the Independent Pursuit on www.marinetraffic.com Baring contact with ice-burgs, giant waves or torpedoes, I should reach Antwerp in Belgium 11 days later around the 21st/22nd of July.

I’m expecting this journey to be a little different to the last. For one thing its a much smaller ship, 38,000 tonnes deadweight, versus the 100,000 tonnes of the Nabucco. It is also, alas, not a French ship, but a German one, so I am not expecting them to provide wine…

Image from www.marinetraffic.com

However this time I might also get some company on board in the way of fellow passengers. The Atlantic crossing is a much more popular one for people who like to undertake this sort of thing, so it will be interesting to see if that makes the experience different (assuming there are any!)

If nothing else fellow passengers might help me put off thinking about this map and the end. I’m not quite there yet, I will still have several weeks to explore the low countries when I get back to Europe, but there is little getting away from the fact that when the next red line goes on this map, the fat ladies cue won’t be far behind…

I will post details on the journey itself when I get to the otherside. But in the meantime for those interested, I booked the voyage through these guys,
www.zylmann.de/
a different German travel agency to the ones I used for crossing the Pacific, although in the end that was a choice based mostly on the fact the crossing offered by Kaptain Zylmann best fitted with my itinerary.

You can take a closer look at the map here although having said that I will soon update it with the final line I have in fact lost the login details to do so, so it might stay like that for a while!