Global shipping and same-day delivery

Fuel is one of the essential considerations when building a boat. Modern catamarans will (for now) all have diesel. It runs your main two engines. But from there, it becomes more complex. Some people have propane to cook with—think stovetop. For your tender, you need gas for the little engine. There is an electrical battery for instruments. AGM batteries or lithium. There are ways you get and store power. Solar. Wind generators. Alternators. Water generators. It's complex

I decided to simplify this complex matrix and focus on only diesel and battery power. This meant an induction stovetop, an electric oven, and an electric tender.

After lots of research, I decided on a Zerojet. It is a carbon fibre boat with an electric engine. Charged from the batteries, which are charged from the sun (mostly).

Now, the complexity of this is that Zerojet is in New Zealand, and my boat was being built in South Africa.

So how does this work? Well, global shipping is a tiered racket. Zerojet gets an agent. That works with the actual companies that have large cargo ships, and they plot out a journey to move your items from point A to point B. Sometimes on their cargo ships, but sometimes they outsource it to others. Easy.

This is until there is a product delay, and they miss the cut-off day to ship the tender. Now, you must buy a temporary tender because you can not leave South Africa without one. Yes, this happened. Zerojet missed the cut-off; if they had shipped it, it would have arrived three weeks after I was gone.

So this began the epic seven-month global shipping game that saw the tender go from Auckland to Singapore on one cargo ship, then transferred to another to go to Halifax (this trip had it stuck in the Suez Canal for a few weeks), put on another cargo ship to go to the port of New York, then onto a truck to Miami, then onto another truck to Fort Lauderdale, and then onto a ship to…. Well, this is the funny part.

I needed to know where I wanted it eight weeks in advance because, even though the same cargo ship travels from Fort Lauderdale to St. Lucia to St. Vincent to Grenada, there is no flexibility, and you need to make your decision eight weeks in advance. It was a pain because I wanted to be sailing and had no idea where I would be. I picked St Lucia.

This entire process took a quick seven months, from the missed cut-off to me placing my hands on the tender.

In North America, we have become accustomed to same-day shipping. To order something in the morning, get it at dinner. But in most other places, this does not exist.

I have a further example. I realized I would need a few large vacuum seal bags for my mattresses, and I knew I needed them in Grenada. Twenty days in advance, I went to Amazon—the reliable Amazon—and they said they could have them to me in seven days. Thirteen days later, I realized they wouldn't make it. They had not even shipped!!

So I called up my brother, who ordered them in Toronto in the morning and had them by 3. And was off to the DHL office to ship them to me. No problem. I still had 7 days. Errrrr. DHL. The company that delivers items via riverboat in Europe said the quickest they could have them to Grenada was 10 days, "best case," and the cost was almost five times the cost of the items. Grenada is a five-hour flight from Toronto.

It just serves as a reminder. Shipping is complicated, and in North America, we have it easy…. It's almost too easy.

Just try shipping me a box of crackers to Grenada, and you'll see. Seven months later.

Expectation reset. Part-time sailing. Part-time logistics management.