When I first had the idea to do this trip, I asked Lang Kidby how he shipped his Fiat 500. He suggested Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) and said that it had cost about $1000 including fees. This sounded pretty reasonable so I persisted.
WWL offered a roll on roll off service from Fremantle to Vladivostok for US$1000 plus various fees that brought it up to about AUS$1500. I initially contacted WWL's office in Brisbane who after the initial quote put me onto their Melbourne office who then put me onto their Perth office. All of them were very helpful but were unable to answer the two big questions - how much and when does out need to go so as to arrive in Vladivostok in the first week of June? The very nice chap at WWL Fremantle suggested I contact a shipping agent, RyanCook at AAW Global Logistics. I had not realised that an agent was pretty much mandatory to get the paper work done.
Ryan was able to broker a deal with WWL to ship the car roll-on-roll-off via Yokohama. The only problem was that we couldn't plan when to send it because the second shilling line, FESCO, had not published their schedule for May/June. Eventually we made an informed guess and decided to send it on the Tamerlane. It needed to be delivered on Tuesday ? ready to sail on Thursday. This left just a couple of days to do some finishing touches on the car before driving it up to the docks at Fremantle. I was a bit nervous because the paperwork insists the car must not leak anything. The only British cars that don't leak a bit are those that have run out of oil. In the end it was not a bother. In the end the ship left on Sunday the 28th April and my boys and I were fortunate enough to see it depart. We were returning from my parents house north of Perth. The Tamerlane is like a huge white warehouse that floats.
WWL's policy is not to book the transhipment until after the vehicle leaves. It took weeks to find out which FESCO vessel the car would go on. Meanwhile, I needed to arrange a visa but not knowing when to arrive made that impossible. As time was running out I decided to go for a three month visa. This gives me a bit more flexibility. However, it is more complicated than the normal 30 day tourist visa. Before getting a Russian visa you have to get an invitation or visa support document. For a 30 day tourist visa you can get this though a hotel costing around $20. For the 30 day, double entry businesses visa I used an online visa service. I understood that the invitation would take 7 days but it ended up taking 14 days. This was cutting things a bit fine so I sent applications off for myself and my boys with mine taking the $330 2 day processing option. However, the next week it came back with a post it nota saying I Ned end send separate postal orders for each visa! I wish they had made that clear on their institutions. So I cashed I the postal order and sent everything back exactly as it was but with three postal orders for the same total.
The registered post tracking showed that the forms arrived on Friday. By Wednesday the next week I was wondering if my visa would get back in time for my flight on the Sunday. I must have spent quite a bit of Thursday trying to contact the consulate with no response. However, in the end they must have got sick of me as they emailed to say it had been sent Wednesday. Now post from Sydney to Bunbury can tasks a week so I was pretty sure i'dhave to postpone my flights and hotel. But in the end it turned up in Fridays post. Was I a happy chap.
No comments:
Post a Comment