Waaaay back in what, September?, we contracted with Cross Chartering Yacht Transport (CCYT) to ship our Island Girl from Florida to the Pacific Northwest. The actual route is Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) to Victoria British Columbia. We’ll be sending her on a Panama Canal Cruise!! Our contract was for shipping her in April. We wouldn’t know the actual date in April until much closer to the time, depending upon when they are able to get a ship contracted for the cargo and route. We paid 25% down, non-refundable, so we were locked in. Here is a map of the usual path the ships take: from Port Everglades, through the Panama Canal, stopping in Golfito Costa Rica, La Paz Mexico, Ensenada Mexico, then to Victoria British Columbia. Island Girl will get to see some great places!
In October, we went to to the Fort Lauderdale International Boat show and while we were there, we talked to a CCYT guy about the procedure. He said we would get shipping information about three weeks prior to shipping. Hmmm. OK. My perpetual planning self was having a hard time with that, because a 30 day window? – the entire month of April? – makes it really hard to plan for since Port Everglades is 300 miles away from where Island Girl currently resides….on the dirt in Port Charlotte.
To further complicate things, we intended to make a cross-country road trip from Florida to Washington this spring. Why? Well, we’re going to need a vehicle in Washington for the summer, and we always enjoy the road trip. Plus, we are going to camp and do stuff differently this time than we have in the past, and want to take our time. So the plan was to make the road trip, then we’d fly back home to move Island Girl from the boat yard in Port Charlotte to Port Everglades. With perfect weather, that boat trip would take at least 5 or 6 days, depending upon the route we took. There are two ways to get from the Florida west coast to the Florida east coast. The most obvious route is down around through the Keys. That route requires some good weather days since we would need to travel a hundred miles or so out in the Gulf, and that is a minimum six day trip. The other route is through Lake Okeechobee, and is a much more protected route for weather, and it is a bit shorter, with a minimum five days. My concern was related to the Lake O route, because one of the locks on that route was scheduled to be closed for the months of January, February, and March. So if our shipping date was early in April, we would HAVE to go through the Keys to get to Port Everglades, and that is so dependent upon weather that you can’t just GO when you want to. We’d need a cushion of time for sure!. There were SO many things to figure out!! So I planned out routes for both options and all we could do was wait and see.
In the meantime, Kenny had an idea about our road trip. We bought a Kawasaki KRX side-by-side off-road toy, and a toy hauler travel trailer. Oh – and a truck. Yep – meet Kawi, Limbo, and Henry. 😳 More about that in other episodes 😁
Anyway, his idea was to leave home in March and go to Arizona. The earlier in March that we left, the more time we would have, since we potentially might need to move Island Girl before the first of April. We could leave the vehicles at his parents’ place in Quartzsite AZ, then fly back to Florida to get Island Girl moved over to Port Everglades and loaded onto her ship. After she was loaded, we could fly back to Arizona and continue our road trip to Washington. That way we’d be able to take more than three weeks for the entire Florida to Washington adventure. We’d have three weeks just for the AZ to WA piece while Island Girl is cruising. Cool – that sounded like a good plan. So I mapped out a trip to play our way over to Arizona, and we figured we’d leave Florida the first of March, in case we had to be back for an early April shipping date.
In mid January, I texted Paul at CCYT to let them know about our concerns with the Lake Okeechobee lock situation, and to request as much advance notice as possible. Paul Haber at CCYT is who we have dealt with, and he’s actually the company president. 👌 Might as well go to the top, right? He said that at the time, they had nothing firm for April, but expected April 5-20. Ugh! Alternatively, they had room on the late February sailing if we wanted to accelerate our date. OOhh. – That was tempting for a bit, but we didn’t have a marina in Washington for Island Girl to live in yet, and we didn’t really want to go up there in March! While we were in WA over Christmas, we put our name on three different marina waitlists, and they were all hesitant that we’d even get a spot by May. Marina space is very difficult to come by!! So, we decided to stick with the April shipping plan.
I checked with Paul again three weeks later on February 8, and the April estimate was now a littler later – April 10-25. Oooh – that’s actually really good for us, so that we won’t have to worry about the lock closure. He said they generally contract with the ships about 6-8 weeks out, so he wouldn’t have good dates for April until early in March. OK. We would plan to leave on our road trip March 1, and play it by ear as we went along as far as when we’d need to fly back to Florida. You must surely have an idea of how hard this has been for me… the perpetual planner that can’t make a plan! 😫. Another three weeks went by, and we were closing in on our departure date for our road trip. I checked with Paul again on Feb 25. This time he said April 5-20 but they still did not have a firm date. AGH! He assured me that they would give us three weeks notice about the ship’s ETA, and then they would give us an exact loading date 2-3 days prior to our loading time slot. OK – to me that means that no matter what, we’ll need to find a marina in the Port Everglades area to just hang out in and be ready until our load date/time.
I checked in again with Paul on March 10, (I’m SURE he is tired of hearing from me!), and he said they expected to have an update soon, and were looking at April 20-30 now. My own side note here – during this time, the war between Russia and Ukraine had erupted, and fuel prices had skyrocketed. I’m certain that was playing into the cards with CCYT trying to contract a ship! Thank goodness our contract price is locked in!! I let two more weeks go by, and we didn’t hear anything, so I texted Paul on March 23. I mean, April was only a week away, right? By this time, we were in Florence Arizona. He replied that they (FINALLY!!) had a fix on the STAR LAGUNA for May 10-15. WHAT?! Mid MAY?! Well, our contract did say that they had an additional 30 days beyond our contracted month. Dang! Well, it is what it is. We have plenty of time now!! We decided that we would just continue our road trip and go all the way to Washington, then fly home to Florida to take Island Girl to the east coast.
I texted Paul again on April 11 to check for any news, figuring we were a month out from the estimated time frame. He said the ETA for the STAR LAGUNA into Port Everglades was May 13-20, and then he sent us an email with some info about loading procedures and marina options. Oh boy! At least that was something! I’ve been kind of worried about finding a marina that won’t break the bank, and getting reservations. We are certainly reminded that schedules and boats don’t go together. We know that from doing the Great Loop twice, but we never realized that it applied to shipping as well. But sure enough…. shipping time is WAY worse than ISLAND TIME! 🤨
Another check in with Paul on April 22, and he said the ETA for Star Laguna was narrowed down to May 18-20, and we will load for 2-3 days. OK… the date keeps slipping farther. Nothing we can do. (And then I wonder, is the ship going to be full of stuff that will take two weeks to unload before we can load? 🤷♀️ Yikes! 🤔) So, we booked our flight home from Seattle to Florida for Tuesday April 26. We’d hang out at home for awhile and plan to launch Island Girl on Friday May 6. On April 26, we got an actual e-mail from CCYT communicating “current preliminary ETA Port Everglades is 18-20 May. Further schedule will be advised closer to the ships arrival. The ship can be tracked via the following link…..” (on marinetraffic.com). Well, I’ve been watching the STAR LAGUNA on the marinetraffic.com site ever since they gave me her name! Back then, she was coming from China to Houston, and by now had been sitting in Houston for a couple of weeks.
Finally on May 1, the STAR LAGUNA left Houston and is scheduled to call in Panama City Florida by May 4. We’ll see. I wonder where she’ll go after that, before going to Port Everglades? We’re still planning on May 18-20, but that was “preliminary”, so who knows!? We are still planning to launch our Girl on Friday, May 6. We’ll sit at the dock for a couple of days to make sure that everything works, after being high and dry for six months. Then we’ll take a leisurely voyage to Fort Lauderdale. We’ll take our time and enjoy the trip, staying at some familiar fun places since this will be our last and final Florida voyage. And HOORAY! I found a really inexpensive marina at Dania Beach, just 3 miles from the Port Everglades piers, so if we have to sit there for a week, (or more! 🤨) it won’t cost us more than the shipping voyage itself. Who knows…. maybe, just MAYBE the STAR LAGUNA could get to Port Everglades earlier? 🤔 Nah! What am I thinking?! But just in case, what is currently planned as 14 day leisurely trip could be accelerated and shortened down to six….which we’d be happy to do! Stay tuned!