The Eagle has Landed!

After spending a week longer than we would have liked on the I95 intersection in the arse end of Brunswick, we have finally picked Jim up from the docks and are living on the road. Jim arrived intact, with no damage, and sufficient battery power to drive off the ship without assistance. To prove that this whole blog isn't a sham to make me look adventurous, here's a picture of Jim in front of some palm trees.

The whole process of shipping was fairly straightforward but it can be a little daunting for the uninitiated like myself. The following is a little about my experience to help anyone else attempting something similar. It will be fairly boring to anyone not interested in shipping a vehicle overseas, but the process was a fairly steep learning curve for me, and their may be some people who will find the little I learnt useful now, or in the future.

Merry Christmas!

To ease the boredom of being stuck for another few days at an interstate intersection, we hired a car for a couple of days.

Yesterday was spent visiting Savannah, about 70 miles north of Brunswick up the I-95. We only spent the day there but it seems to have more to offer than you can see in a day. It's a grand colonial city that obviously generated a lot of income for the empire in the 18th century. The squares and parks are reminiscent of central London squares like Grosvenor and Russell square, and there is a large area which looks largely as it must have done 200 years ago. The city feels distinctly cosmopolitan compared to the other parts of Georgia that we've seen so far, it's difficult to imagine sushi restaurants and fixie bikes in Brunswick. There's a lot to see, but if all you do in Savannah is go to Leopold's Ice Cream, you won't be disappointed.

Christmas day was spent visiting St Simons Island and Blythe Island Regional Park, mostly walking on the beach and in the sub tropical forest prevalent here. Sadly the temperature has dropped from about 26C last week, to about 10C this week, still warm enough to spend time outside, but certainly not warm enough to be sunbathing on the beach.

I hope everyone else had a great Christmas, with any luck my next blog post will be from the comfort of Jim.

Still Waiting...

I was hoping that my next blog post would be about how we spent Christmas day parked on the beach, drinking wine on Jim's veranda. Sadly this isn't going to happen; the boat carrying Jim was delayed again and despite Jim now being in Brunswick, the port is now shut until the 26th and so the earliest we will be able collect him is Thursday.

To save some money we dropped off the hire car, and so for the last 5 days we've been limited to a walking distance radius from the interstate intersection that we're staying on. On the plus side, we have a multitude of fine establishments to experience within a half mile radius, including two burger chains, two sub/sandwich chains, a fried chicken chain, two BBQ chains, a seafood chain, a pancake chain, five gas stations minimarkets, and six motel/hotel chains.

To save more money we've downgraded from a $70/night hotel, to a $40/night motel. Merry bloody Christmas!

YeeHaw!

It's been a crazy few weeks, full of stress and excitement, and also some moments of unimaginable boredom.

The weeks running up towards putting Jim on a ship, involved putting lots of finishing touches to the interior, including blinds, cushions, curtains, , a mattress, hooks, a bin, a plastic bag holder, subwoofer grill bars, soap dispensers, shoe racks, a floor rug, a door matt, a toilet roll holder, a kitchen roll holder, and a washing line. In addition I installed the fresh water tank and two waste tanks, installed and calibrated the senders in each tank, and installed electric dump valves to each of the waste tanks. There were several items on my 'to-do list' which ultimately never got completed, but there was no mad rush to finish off critical systems at the last minute.

With such a multitude of changes having been installed since I last gave Jim any serious use, it was obviously important that we had a proper shakedown run to make sure that we could identify any problems and fix them before the big trip. With this in mind, we took the decision to spend one night in the truck on Bournemouth sea front before driving to the docks the next morning. Let it not be said that we aren't meticulous in planning and preparation!

Thankfully no major problems showed up; the beer was cold, the oven was hot, we were warm in bed, and we got to our destination without breaking down.