[tic-tac]

Hola!

I've been following my Cooper as it made its way to the boat. According to WW, it was loaded on the 7th and left Southampton on the 8th. I've tried to find it at sea (the boat is the Tanabata, if I remember correctly) using the site in the FAQ, but I can't confirm the call sign of the ship, plus... does anyone else find that marine stats map difficult to decode?

Anyway, I was wondering if there was a place on the WW site to confirm that boats are on schedule, or delayed, or at sea, or what have you.

Thanks for any help!
MR

[cooper4us]

Our MINI is also aboard of the Tanabata. According to the WW site, the car was loaded on the vessel as of 8/8/02 and the ship did depart on its Atlantic voyage towards the US' East coast the same day.....so our MINIs have been already at sea for the past 7 days!.

When I first checked the WW site, the original schedule stated that the vessel would be arriving into Charleston, NC on 8/24. A couple of days later, the arrival port date was updated to 8/21 (Wednesday of next week) or 3 days ahead of the original schedule!.

The Tanabata's ship call sign is: WCZ5535

I agree with you 100% in that it is very difficult to interpret the Marine map information found in the Oceanweather.com site.

Also, keep in mind that the ship's call sign will become visible in the marine maps only when the vessel has reported weather conditions for its immediate area. If the ship hasn't encountered any rough weather yet (Hope not), then you won't be able to see it at all or determine its current oceanic location.

The only other alternative to keep track of transport progress is to call MINIUSA directly. WW (The vessel shipping company) is no longer authorized by BMW to provide cargo status inquiries either over the phone or via E-mail.

In the MINIUSA Owner's Lounge tracking page, our car's status still shows as "Awaiting Transport". Someone say in another forum that the status will change to "In Route" once the car reaches the destination port (Doesn't make much sense to me).


Other than that, I guess our best option is to be very patient and hope that our cars move along quickly and smoothly on the last leg of the delivery process. Some people have already experienced delays getting the cars out of the port into the Distribution Center. So far so good. If everything continues to move on the current schedule, we are looking at least to another 3 or 4 weeks before we take delivery of our MINIs!.

Be glad, many others have been bumped, several times, and missed the boats at the Southhampton port due to over capacity and voyage booking problems. At least our cars are already somewhere in the North Atlantic making the way overhere.

[tic-tac]

Hi cooper4us,

Thanks so much for your reply! I'm glad to see someone else who has ferreted out all of those details. (Did you end up going to the Coast Guard's site to find those call letters like I did? ) I was pretty sure that she was at sea and that things were well, but now I feel a lot better. I do consider us lucky so far in terms of the boat getting off on time and all. Did not know that bit about the boats showing up when they report their weather, so thanks again!

Your Cooper sounds really nice, by the way. I saw the white in the showroom in Greenville and it was beautiful!

[cooper4us]

Here is another fun tip for you to try at the WW Cargo tracking site.....Perform a cargo status tracking by "Booking Number" (GBSOU95151) and you'll see how many more "MINI Brothers" are traveling along with our cars in the Tanabata...there are a total of 123 (Including our cars) MINIs traveling together in this vessel!.

By the way, your car also sounds terrific! Really like the Red/White combo but we decided against it as most Coopers around here are ordered this way. Also Silver and Indy Blue Coopers are becoming more common. I have not yet seen a Velvet Red, Silk Green or Pepper White (Well I think I did once last month)out in the street.

We got a pretty "Basic" Cooper as the only options we picked from the list were the CVT transmission and the multifunction steering wheel controls with Cruise control and leather wrapped steering wheel. We selected the standard 15" wheels but opted for the no extra charge 8-spoke design silver alloys instead. Seats (Std seats) are upholstered in Black Leatherette and the door panels are Silver Gray, which I have yet to see one with the Silver interior door panels (Most are black).