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Signing up for our freighter travel was a mission! The UK freighter travel agent seemed to put obstacles in our way continuously from our first contact, seven weeks before boarding. We expected we would have to provide medical certificates, yellow fever certificates, various declarations, passports, and visas but we did not expect we would have to provide them repeatedly and after we had been told there was nothing else to provide. Add to this, the difficulty of arranging payment (“No you cannot pay by credit card”), their lack of knowledge of the ships and their schedules, and the (un)timeliness of requesting or providing documentation. Finally, after a month of emails, phone calls and physical effort and with only a few days to spare before boarding (and finally Leigh ‘putting his foot down’), we got the tickets. Hooray!
The original schedule had us boarding on the 10
th but the ticket said the 11
th. There was no explanation of the date change, a typical reflection of the standard of service and lack of knowledge of the travel agent. When we contacted the shipping agent in Barcelona he said the 10
th at 2.00pm, so we boarded on the original schedule. Any airline
that made traveling this difficult would go broke in a week!
We hailed a taxi to take us to the container terminal and after much discussion, pointing to the Google map and encouragement that the driver should continue, we arrived at the terminal. The guards checked our tickets and then noticing were loaded down with extra bags containing essential supplies such as ... gin ... one of the guards offered to drive us across the terminal to the ship.
When the vehicle arrived at the base of the gangway we looked up at the massive container ship “CGM CMA Lyra” and gasped at the length, height and size of not only the ship but also of the gangway. Eileen steeled herself and we set off up the narrow gangway with her suitcase. A nice crewman saw us wrestling the 23kg bag and came down to help us from half way up. Quick as anything he was back down to carry my bag too.
Once on board we met some of the ship’s crew, handed over our documentation and were taken in the lift to our cabin. Our suite was much better than we expected with two double
beds, a three piece lounge suite, desk and chair, fridge, double wardrobe, an ensuite, and windows both forward and to the starboard side. It was so spacious and comfortable we thought a crewman would soon appear to tell us there had been a mistake with our cabin allocation.
The ship is just over a year old and in very good order. I was expecting some grubby old working ship but the ship massively exceeded our expectations.
We did not get an impression of just how big the ship is until we looked out the window. The containers stretched into the far distance and things on the ground looked like Legoland toys. We later found out it is the 5
th largest container ship in the world, 363 metres long and 46 metres wide. That’s the size of three rugby fields complete with dead ball areas! The Captain said it is 70 metres high – the height of a 20 story building although up to 15 metres is below the water line. You certainly get a grandstand view wherever the ship goes.
The ship can hold a maximum 11,400 standard containers, 11 levels below deck and 8 above deck.
That’s around 350,000 tons of ‘stuff’!
The engine is 1200 horsepower and can travel a maximum speed of 25 knots. It burns around 150 tons of fuel oil a day and the fuel tank holds more than 5000 tons, yes tons, of fuel oil. That means the cost of filling the fuel tank is in the millions of dollars! Imagine receiving that credit card bill!
The food on board was good, but there was no choice. Breakfast (8am) was cereal, toast with spreads, juice, tea or coffee, and a hot dish. Lunch and dinner (12pm and 6pm) was soup, a main meal and salad. Bread, cheese and salami were always available.
And so began our three week adventure at sea!
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