Day 83: Ticket To Ride!

More good news on this Friday!

My MINI Cooper has been "received at the terminal" and "booked" on the Don Pasquale!   

(No worries about my Cooper being gay-friendly... all the ships are named after operas... Madame Butterfly, Carmen, etc.)

The Don Pasquale (pictured) was built in 1997 and is the "sister" ship to the Don Carlos and Don Quijote.  It is a Pure Car Truck Carrier (PCTC) and can hold a maximum of 5,873 cars... or a combination of 2,949 cars and 488 trucks.  It has the a restaurant, TV room and library, gymnasium, outdoor swimming pool and sauna.  Now, my MINI better just keep it under control... don't want any crazy miscellaneous room charges when it's time to checks out!

According to the shipping schedule, it will leave port of Southampton on Sunday (Feb 5th) and arrive at Port Hueneme (Los Angeles) on February 28th!   Now before I get too excited, I do need final confirmation that my Cooper has been "loaded" onto the ship... but hopefully that's just a technicality at this point.

*********************************************************************

So how did I get all this information?  Well, this requires a little more poking around... to hopefully save prospective/future MINI owners from having to scrawl through message boards, here is how I did it:

When your car is "awaiting production," you can start to narrow down potential ships... 

Wallenius Wilhelmsen is the primary shipper for MINI.  Under "Customer Centre" you can use the drop down menu for "Schedules"... which should lead you to the Search By Ports page.   

There you enter the country of origin (United Kingdom) and destination (USA)... on the next page, specify the port of origin (Southampton) and Destination Port.  The Destination Port will be either New York, Charleston SC, or Port Hueneme (Los Angeles)... pick the closest port to you (for those in the middle of the country or mid-Atlantic region, not sure what that may be!) ... the next page should list out the ships over the next month or so.

This is how I guessed, even a couple of weeks ago, that my car would probably be on the Don Pasquale.

Once your car is "in production," you should be able to get you VIN #  via the Owner's Lounge on the MINI website (it's under the "Review Order Detail" tab). 

Once your MINI is "awaiting transport" (according to the website or 1-866-ASK-MINI), you can head back to Wallenius Wilhelmsen and, again, under the "Customer Centre" drop down... go to "Cargo Tracking"... which should take you to... surprise.. the Cargo Tracking page... click on Auto Cargo, leading to the Track By Auto page ... and this is where you enter your full 17 alpha-numeric VIN.  Click the "track" button and it'll tell you it can't find anything (like it did for me the past couple of days)... or hopefully give you details of when it was booked, received at terminal, loaded, and discharged.

(UPDATE: It appears that the more specific "cargo tracking" and "track by auto" links do not like to be linked to directly... so just go to the main WW site and follow those steps!)

And the tracking of your ship doesn't end there!   To be continued...

Comments

[Art]

Thanks for the detailed info on how to track your MINI on the ship. I can't believe you can do all this online! Incredible! Tracking my Mini now - still docked at Southampton. Thanks!