Finally glad to be on a ship.Anyone else concerned about Bertha?

 

Cigars? I am SO there.


psst, jeff---we're not talking about B****a. Maybe she'll go away.






Actually, as someone said (either here or in the week 28 thread), it looks like the WH is going to go north of Bertha and skirt it to the west before the storm turns back north.

 

Understand.......Wish we could take delivery in Spartenburg and take a few laps on their test track.....

 

I could get behind that!

 

I just got word from my MA - I'm on the Western Highway!!!

 

Hey fellow Texans!
OK- My MA told me my car gets in the 24th, so I've got to be on the Western Highway. I made my flight reservations last night for my trip to Chicago. My MA says it should be there by Aug 4. So I'll drive it back from there. I'm actually in CC.

I heard that the chocolate buffet is awesome, but it's not til midnight.....

 

Thanks, but I suck at cards and can't stand the smoke. But a drink and shuffleboard? Count me in!

I bought through Momentum, as well. When we were there they had a couple cars on the lot, but pickins was slim, as they say. I already had planned to order; I was just glad they had something for me to test drive while they evaluated my trade-in.

And now I wait.

-monkey

 

Now that our Minis are getting close, it seems it is time to start planning break-in drives. What are your plans? Do you have a long weekend in mind to break your mini in on the road? No special plans?

Let's pass the time planning and dreaming of our motoring futures!

Here's mine:

o Weekend drive to Galveston
o Overnight trip to Fredericksburg via the Texas back roads
o Probably some day trips to the north towards Lake Livingston and Huntsville

Suggestions for Texas drives welcome.

 

You can always drive out to Brenham and grab some Blue Bell ice cream, or take a drive to Dublin, TX, where they sell Dr. Pepper that is made with pure cane sugar, rather than corn syrup.

As for me, if it gets here in time we'll be taking a day off and motoring around Galveston for our daughter's first birthday. If not, the long drive home from the dealer will have to do for now.

-monkey

 

Am I missing something? The ship only took 7 days to cross the Atlantic, it is right now basically sailing by Maine and Massachusetts, how in the world does it take it 6 more days to get to Charleston?

 

If I've read the schedule correctly, it looks like the Western Highway stops in Baltimore first, then heads down to Charleston.

-monkey

 

It docks in Baltimore, MD on 7/21 and departs for Charleston, SC on 7/22. I would also assume there would be increased congestion along the east coast that would limit attainable speeds...

 

Now you've gone and made me look foolish.

Any Minis get off in Baltimore? Must be BMW's or Volvo's or something else.

 

I'm with Wampa on this one. . . she crossed the Atlantic in basically 5 days. According to Sailwx, she has slowed to about 14kts after sailing in the open waters at or over 20kts.

Still, it is nice to see progress and land on the map!

 

I suspect that they were hammering west to clear Bertha before she turned north. They probably can't get an open berth at Baltimore if they get there too early. As far as other traffic goes, I'd imagine that anything short of a tanker or a warship is likely to get out of the way of that big ol' square bow.

On another note, the "tropical distubance" off the FL-GA-SC coast can just go away, if no one objects.

And on a final note, the turnout at yesterday's Bingo session was a little lax, so the Captain has authorized free beverages for this afternoon. Your presence is ... encouraged.

 

Anything with free beverages gets my vote! A cold Guiness sounds very good

 

I'm going to try again to stay up late for the midnight chocolate buffet. I missed it again last night.
I hear that's one reason they always have to clean up our babies when they get off the ship....a chocolate fountatin can be quite messy.

 

That 'splains a lot of things...

 

We're near Charleston on the coast. We'll be getting rained on all weekend - it started today from the tropical storm off the coast. Here's hoping it moves away and stays away from our minis coming down the coast.

I'm game for some of that chocolate!

 

Okay, it appears that Clubman Girl's car has been misbehaving, and the Captain has stopped the ship to investigate. Something about "tall Texan." Can somebody get word out there for some restraint?

 

Sailwx has stopped posting updates of the Western Highway's position. I found this other tracking site and it seems to be almost real-time. The maps not very big, but you can zoom and pan around. Looks like she's only about 400 mi. off from MD.

http://www.vesseltracker.com/en/Ship...y-9325776.html

David

 

No doubt too much chocolate at the midnight buffet!

Thanks for the update, Davidbod. Wonder why Sailwx dropped the tracking. I've got my eye now on C$!@#$%^L (don't want to say the name and jinx our minis' schedule). Hopefully will push off to the east about the time we leave NY for Charleston.

 

Sparrowhawk was on the Western Highway that arrived in Charleston on June 26th. Due to some issues at the distribution center, I finally made his acquaintance today. It was a frustrating 3 weeks.

Thanks to the staff (Drew, Joe and Kelvin, among others) at Flow MINI in Winston-Salem for working to keep me updated during this time - and for allowing me to vent a few times when it seemed like my car had fallen in a black hole.

 

Thanks for the link, but how can you tell a position? All that comes up for me is a blank blue square. Even if I zoom out, I have to get to the 300 mile scale, and there's still no indication of ship position, just the map with the US coastline on the left.

 

OKAY! Even better news!!!

She's actually on the way up the bay to Baltimore!!!

Check it out on this site: http://marinetraffic.com/ais/ You search by vessel in the pull down menu on the upper left. Click on it and start typing the ship's name, and it should go to it. It appears to update nearly real time.

Woohoo! With any luck and a quick turnaround...

The bad news is that there may not be AIS coverage all the way down to Charleston.