Tilbury, Here We Come - Setting Off
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2008
1
2
150
Trip End
Dec 20, 2008
Tilbury, United Kingdom
Friday, August 1, 2008
Made it to the ship by a combination of car, trains, taxis and gangway. Suitcase hoisted on the shoulder of a crewman in traditional manner, and up the gangway into the ship.
Yes, in only four and a half months, I'll have arrived . . . back in Tilbury.
The ship is the CGA CGM Manet. She is 195 metres long, over 20,000 tons, and will carry us to Panama, Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. (But not to Auckland, where I thought I was going; a sign of things to come?)
Met my three fellow passengers, all Aussies en route to Sydney, the Steward, "Purser" and most importantly the Captain.
Cabin is fine. Spacious, clean, with a view (for now, until all the containers arrive) and a fridge. Not the TV/DVD/Radio I expected, though - they're in a saloon across the corridor.
Looking out to port, there are large containers being picked up and brought along by very large moving cranes . . which deliver them to an absolutely enormous crane that picks them up and whizzes them onto the ship, bring other off too. Impressive.
We leave Tilbury for Rotterdam at 02:00.
