Geeky natural wine shipment news

I just received an email from what I thought was a spammer with an address like "no-reply@whatever.dot.com", and which I usually delete on sight, but for some reason or other, on this occasion I decided to open it up; and hey, what-do-you-know, it was actually something interesting!!! It was from the shipping company that's carrying 2 pallets of my wine to the USA!

Well, my pallets are on the good ship Maersk Malacca, inside a 40' Reefer container (along with other pallets of wine from various artisan producers from all over Spain) bound for JosePastorSelections' warehouse in New York.

The Good Ship Maersk Malacca
(photo by Manuel Hernández Lafuente)

She set sail from Barcelona 2 days ago on 5th February. Yesterday she called in to Valencia, and right now as I type, she's en route to Tangiers (Morocco), where she should dock tomorrow morning, 8th Feb. She should set sail again on the same day, bearing due West across the Atlantic (all communications channels open, phasers on stun) and is due to arrive in New York on Sunday the 17th Feb. There she will unload my pallets, and then head on south to Portsmouth and Savannah.

For a real-time map with position of the ship, check out this web-page. It's so cool! Apart from showing the current location of the ship, at the click of a mouse, you can bring up all sorts of really useless interesting information :)

For some photos of the good ship Maersk Malacca herself, click on this link. One of the photos is a bit worrying, as those containers seem to be stacked up on deck pretty high! Surely it can't cross the Atlantic like that?!!!

Pretty geeky stuff, no?

PS. And here's another link to an article on the Maersk Malacca. It seems that shipping line, Diana Shipping Services, S.A., has just been awarded a "Maritime Labour Certificate" for the working conditions aboard. The crew (not sure if motley or not) are rejoicing to learn that the cap'n has banned keel-hauling altogether and has cut back on the use of the cat o' nine tails! But the normal floggings will continue until morale improves!!!