A trip to get the crate
18 October 2010
Monday, October 18th
After securing an agent to clear our crate thru customs and a week of them trying to finalize the details it turns out we needed to go ourselves to clear and collect it. So early on Monday we were up in a taxi heading to Port of Spain. Interesting trip, first one driver, Marlin, came here to collect us, but he was not the driver who was taking us to POS. He just had a drop off in our yard, so picked us up on the way out, and we were to rendezvous with Stanley, our driver on the way. We pull over on the main road at the outskirts of POS and are swapped over like a package. Stanley drove us to the docks....except that was not where we were going....Small communications error, quickly corrected and we arrived at our initial destination just after 8am. Here we met with the broker, who then drove us to the facility south of the main city, 45 minutes or so. Of course, it only took 45 minutes because most of the time he was driving 140 kilometers! Here we are in what is essentially a little Datsun station wagon, with the music jamming zipping along the highway - Jim had to look away most of the time.
When we arrive at the Medway facility about 9:20 we first had to go to the trailer outside the building, hand over our paperwork, then wait, get called, go inside the warehouse to the cashier, door #2, pay the warehouse fee, go to the Customs Office, door #5, hand over your documents, answer a few questions, go back to the trailer outside, wait a little while, get called to go back to Customs, Door #5, long discussion, a problem with the paperwork, go to the Receivers office....way down at the other end of the building, have them adjust the paperwork and provide new copies, go back to Customs, Door #5 with the new paperwork, wait a bit, have them stamped, go to the Customs Cashier, pay the customs fee, back to the waiting trailer - and then..back to the warehouse, to the customs office on the lower level...identify the crate (um, yeah...it's the big one against the wall there. Are you sure? Well it's the biggest crate in the warehouse...yeah, pretty sure). The warehouse workers crack open the crate and pull out and cut open about 5 boxes. The customs officer does a cursory check, asks me a few questions about the contents and approves the crate and assesses the duty (290TT, or about $50.) Hallelujah!
One more trip to the cashier, pay the duty, get the receipt, then to the duty officer, sign the log book, and one more stop to another desk who I think releases the shipment from the warehouse. Signed, sealed, paid, stamped, stamped, STAMPED and FINALLY good to go! Fortunately we were able to get all this done in about an hour - because the warehouse goes to lunch at 11:00am...and nothing happens during that time. Our truck driver was there and ready and they loaded the whole, upright crate in a little open bed truck...and by 11am we were on our way back to the boatyard.
We get dropped back at the boat yard, and about 1.5 hours later the truck with the crate arrives. The yard team pop over with the forklift and pull the crate off the truck and tuck it under the trampoline between the hulls. Now the fun really begins. We managed to get all the boxes out, opened up and the cardboard pitched by the end of the day. We have stuff smashed into every corner of the boat (except the aft cabins, where we are still getting work done. So suffice it to say, it's a little hard to move around the boat just now. But - it's Finally here..and as soon as I can find it...I'll unpack the rubbing compound for Jim to start buffing the hull tomorrow.