Our BMW European Delivery Trip

The Faust completed its almost two week journey across the Atlantic and docked in Manzanillo, Panama today:

Name: FAUST http://www.vesseltracker.com/en/Ships/Faust-I56297.html
IMO: 9332925
Time: 21-06-2011 01:14:22 UTC  (18:14:22 PDT or 16:14:22 EST local time since    Panama doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time)
MOVEMENT: Vessel stopped. ( Port: Colon   Berth: Colon Port  )
PORT: The vessel FAUST has moored at berth. ( Port: Colon   Berth: Colon Port )

The Faust in port at Manzanillo:

It was due in at 20-06-2011 06:00 UTC , so it was over 18 hours late.  It was headed towards the port, already late and then it suddenly turned north, headed about 10-15 miles into open water, did a loop and then turned back towards port completing a larger loop.  From the ship traffic it appeared that there must have been a traffic jam at the Panama Canal!

Faust’s “Crazy Ivan”:

There’s no departure time scheduled but it was supposed to leave the same day it arrived, which I’m guessing will be later tomorrow.  Then it will start through the Panama Canal, crossing from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean and start it’s nine day journey up the coast of Mexico and California to Port Heueneme, CA.  It’s getting closer!

The Faust docked at Southampton this morning at 6:38:07 UTC.  Here’s a couple of webcam shots showing the Faust heading towards dock:

Here’s a screen shot from MarineTraffic.com showing the Faust at dock in Southampton:

The Faust departed Southampton t0day at 17:08:03 UTC.  Now it’s heading out into the Celtic Sea and then making its long, 13-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean.  It’s next stop is Manzanillo, Panama where it’s scheduled to arrive on 20 June at 6:00 UTC.  Then it’s through the Panama Canal and up to Port Hueneme, CA where it be be unloaded.

We finally have confirmation that our car arrived in the port city of Bremerhaven, Germany, was booked at and was loaded on board the M/V Faust, an LCTC (Large Car Truck Carrier) also referred to as a PCTC (Pure Car Truck Carrier) and a Ro/Ro (Roll On, Roll Off).  We didn’t get this information until late last night though, so it was an anxious 11 days waiting for that confirmation.  Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics is the carrier and apparently their systems were having problems all weekend which may have contributed to the delay.

So we found out last night that our car was logged as “Booked” at 21:04 on 26 May, the day after we dropped it off at LOGINOUT at the Munich Airport.  It was “Received at Terminal” at 6:50 on 4 June, the day that the Faust returned to port, and “Loaded on Vessel” at 14:12 the same day.  It’s on voyage #CD122-FAT, with stops at the ports of Zeebrugge, Belgium, Southampton, UK, and Manzanillo, Panama, arriving at Port Heuneme, CA on 29 June. From there it will be trucked down to our dealer, BMW of San Diego, where we will take re-delivery, estimated between July 20 and August 3.

Here’s a shot from a live webcam from 6 June at 8:08 CEST at the port of Bremerhaven showing the Faust (identified by “Wallenius Wilhelmsen” on the side) in port.  Our car was loaded onto the Faust about six hours later.

The Faust left the port of Bremerhaven on Friday, 4 June at 17:49 UTC and arrived at the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium on 5 June at 23:35 UTC.  It departed the port of Zeebrugge today at 17:37 UTC and is scheduled to arrive at the port of Southampton on 7 June at 5:00 UTC.

All of this information about the Faust and the voyage comes courtesy of “Track & Trace” at the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics website.  Tracking of the Faust is courtesy of MarineTraffic.com and VesselTracker.com where you can create an account, create a fleet of your ships, receive e-mail alerts of vessel arrivals and departures, and get information about ports, among many other things.  At MarineTraffic.com there is also a live Google map showing the position of your ships that is updated every 100 seconds.  Click here for a link that will show you the current live map position of the Faust.  (if you don’t get any results, the Faust is out of range.)  You can zoom in and out and move the map just like any Google map.

Some facts about the Faust:

• Owner: Wallenius Lines
• Management: Wallenius Marine
• Flag: SWE
• Ship Type: LCTC
• Capacity car (RT43): 8000
• Capacity car/trucks: 468
• Length (m): 227.8
• Beam (m): 32.26
• Draft (m): 11.3
• Deadweight (m/t): 30,383
• Gross tonnage: 71,583
• Main engine (BHP):  21,490 @ 105 RPM
• Delivered: 2007
• Builder: DSME Korea
• Charter: Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics

Well, I’ve been trying to get caught up since I resolved the bandwidth problem but just haven’t found the time.  In any case, this can’t wait:

We have a flat tire!

On our way from Heidelberg to Trier, we no sooner entered Trier than we got the dreaded “Low Tire” warning with the message: “Right rear tire low!”. We had just having reached the break-in period on our way to Trier, so I had been driving at 110-120 MPH with a short burst to 145 MPH.

It was 16:35 today, a Saturday. We immediately used the iDrive Navigation to search for BMW Service, found the closest one only a couple of kilometers away, so we drove there and it was closed. We called BMW Roadside Assistance Service, which was detailed on a piece of paper included with the paperwork we received at BMW Welt. They had told us if anything happened to call that number. A woman answered and took our name, license number and phone number and told us that someone would call us right back. Within a few minutes we received a call from a very nice gentlemen with BMW Delivery Services by the name of Hans Fischer. He took all of our information, including license plate number, VIN, make, model and size of the tire (Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 ZP 255/35 ZR18 90W) and told us he would call us back. When he called back he told us that this tire is very rare in Germany but there was a BMW Specialist in Trier and he would see what he could do. He asked us about our plans to find out where we were going and how far it was. He called us back again and told us that a tire would not be available until Monday and told us that we could not drive on the tire for very far, certainly not to Cologne which was our destination for the night. We told him that one of the reasons for heading towards Cologne is that we had planned to drive on the Nurburgring on Sunday morning, but that was obviously not going to happen. Our destination for Sunday night was Rothenburg ob der Tauber, but that was farther than Cologne.

After discussing the situation, it was his suggestion that we stay in Trier for two nights and that he would escalate this to BMW as a top priority to get us a tire on Monday. I told him that our room at the Cologne Marriott was being covered with points and that we had our first of two nights in Rothenberg on Sunday night. He said that the insurance policy would cover a room for both of us for two nights at up to €120 per person per night and that he would make the reservations for us and call us back. It took him about 5-10 minutes because he had a little bit of a problem finding us a room, but we are now staying at Nells Park Hotel, which is across the street from Park Nells Ländchen. It was only 0.3 km from where we had stopped. It’s a nice hotel and spa and is ranked #4 on TripAdvisor.

I called the Cologne Marriott and they said that I had to call by 16:00 to cancel, so we’ll lose the points, although I’ll talk to BMW about that. I called the Romantik Hotel Markusturm and told them of the situation and that we wouldn’t be staying on Sunday night. It doesn’t appear that we’ll have to pay for Sunday night. The biggest disappointment is that we won’t be able to drive the Nurburgring. That was one thing that Sue was really looking forward to, saying that if we were going to Germany to pick up our new BMW, then she was going to drive the Nurburgring!

So now we have a full day to explore Trier tomorrow rather than just the afternoon/evening today. We’ll see what happens on Monday and hopefully we’ll get to Rothenberg obT reasonably early on Monday.

We are at the very end of our trip and our final night is at the Munich Marriott on Tuesday night with a 12:15 flight on Wednesday.

In case you’re wondering, why don’t I just change the flat tire?  Well, I would if BMW supplied a spare tire!  Most manufacturer’s have now gone to run-flat tires.  No spare tire, no jack, no lug wrench.  If you get a flat tire you’re supposed to just drive to a tire dealer and have the tire repaired or replaced.  That may work better in the US, but in Germany, everything closes early Saturday afternoon and nothing is open on Sunday (including many restaurants on Sunday afternoon and evening, which we learned the hard way!).  So we just have to wait until Monday and hopefully BMW will find a tire for us.

Wish us luck!

P.S.  We have been uploading all of our photos daily to my Picasa Web Album, see the link in the previous post.

Well, the day after I made the last post I went to log into the blog and got the message “Bandwidth limit exceeded”, which I’m sure you’ve seen if you’ve tried accessing it in the last week.  To add to that, Internet access in the Munich Marriott and Innsbruck Hilton was really expensive (€30/day!) .  Access was free in our hotel in Füssen and Mürren, but we didn’t have enough time to post and I hadn’t yet resolved the bandwidth problem.

The good news is that I’ve resolved the bandwidth problem, the blog is back up again, and we found reasonably cheap Internet access.  The bad news is that we’re heading out tomorrow morning to Heidelberg and don’t have enough time to update much tonight.  Hopefully we can find relatively cheap Internet access in Heidelberg.

For now, access photos at my Google Picasa albums:  https://picasaweb.google.com/118324972681424346633.  These are all raw, straight from the camera with no editing and (almost) no captions.  Some of them are under/over-exposed which will be combined later into HDR images.

Don’t forget to leave your comments in the blog!

Wow!  It’s finally happened!  We took delivery of our new BMW this morning:

I’m posting this while sitting in the BMW Welt Premium Lounge sipping on a glass of champagne graciously provided by one of the staff members.  We took delivery of our car at 10:30.  Rudy was our Delivery Specialist and did an excellent job of going over every aspect of the car including spending a lot of time explaining all the features of iDrive and the Navigation System.  He even added our hotel as a destination.

We did the Factory Tour at 11:30.  This took 2.5 hours and it was amazing seeing the robots in the Body Shop welding together every aspect of the car from floor pan to attachment of the side panels and roof.  We also saw the Paint Shop robots spraying the entire car with the base coat of primer.  The main Assembly Area is closed to the tour, but we did see the engine assembly, including the M3 engines.

After that was lunch and a visit to the Welt Gift Shop where Sue picked up her engraved BMW keychain as a gift from BMW and a memento of our visit to the Welt.

We’re heading down to tour the Welt, then head back to the hotel.  We’re coming back tomorrow to see the BMW Museum because we just didn’t have enough time today.

Stay tuned, many more pictures and postings to follow!

Our trip has begun !

We’re sitting here at our gate in San Diego with plenty of time before our flight to SFO at 6:07 PM and it’s scheduled to depart on time  We should arrive 7:40 PM which should give us plenty of time to walk from our arriving terminal around the corner to the International terminal for our flight to Munich at 9:05 PM.

It’s been 106 days since we put down our deposit and the day is finally here!

Click here for our flight path from SFO to MUC.

We’re now the proud owners of a brand new 2011 BMW 335is Coupe!

We went to see Tony at 10:45 this morning.  He had all of the numbers ready for us and handed us off to Amy, the finance person.  We signed seemingly endless forms, waivers, acknowledgements, etc.  When we were done, the car was ours.  Well, BMW Financial Services actually owns the car but as long as we make the payments they’ll let us drive the car and call it “ours”.

Kind of strange going to a dealer, purchasing a new car, and driving home in our old car.  But just one week from today we’ll be on a plane to Munich and picking up that new BMW at the BMW Welt on Thursday, 12 May at 10:30 CEST.

All that’s left to do now is pack and get to the airport!