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Almost all pricing quotes were for the standard New Zealand to the destination. On the destination end, we arrange regional Above: Rodrigues, Mauritius was among our most di cult fuel lls
retail price, without any discount for buying eight batteries and transport to deliver the pallet to the marina. Our Amazon Prime of the trip. After spending the morning lling out paperwork and
purchasing the fuel, the truck arrived with only a four-inch diameter
spending over $8,000 in a single purchase. Quotes in the U.S. shipping time goes from two days to three months, but it sure is
for eight batteries were at least 35% less than in New Zealand. wonderful to see that pallet arrive.hose and no nozzle to control the ow from their high-speed pump.
We had to gravity-feed to avoid spills and were lucky to the job done
We expected the cost of shipping more than a half-ton of We also carry parts in our luggage whenever we return home. in just one day. Middle: Withdrawing Mauritius Rupees at an ATM in
merchandise would exceed the price advantage, so our natural Initially, we carefully packaged the parts in cardboard boxes, but Rodrigues, Mauritius. Partway through the trip we switched to credit

inclination was to not even consider that option.everything was subject to unpacking for TSA inspection, and and ATM cards without foreign transactions fees. Below: Hoisting our
The interesting lesson here was that shipping can be since cardboard doesn’t take weather well, the airlines won’t rst foreign port after leaving Hawaii. Several o cials commented
that they appreciated our showing respect for their country by having
amazingly cost-effective. We shipped the batteries via sea take any responsibility for damage to the boxes. We often had the appropriate ag on board.
freight from Florida to Auckland for just under $800, including to pick them up separately from our luggage in the same area as

all clearance and transport fees, saving more than $2,000 oversized baggage. We later bought large collapsible duffel bags
compared to purchasing the batteries in New Zealand. The that we carry empty to the U.S. and bring back full on the return.
Fueling
disadvantage of sea freight is that it is slow, taking just a bit This is more ef cient and reliable.
more than 30 days.Whenever shipping internationally, whether by sea freight or We generally organize our fuel purchases in advance, particularly

Once we’d learned how economical sea freight was, we checked baggage, theft, damage, or loss is a relatively small but before and after long crossings. Rarely is this dif cult. Where

shipped a pallet of goods to ourselves roughly once a year. Many always present risk. We’ve had pretty good luck, where all sea freight we have a choice, we prefer to fuel directly from a truck rather
products we use are far less expensive sourced from the highly has arrived complete and without any issues. We did lose one airline than marina fuel docks, partly because we got better pricing, but

competitive U.S. market. Other items, such as 60Hz appliances checked bag when returning to Auckland via Los Angeles.also because the fuel in a truck usually hasn’t been sitting around
or the marine coating we use on our outside teak, are simply All the countries we’ve brought goods into had some long. In some cases, a truck is the only available option.

unavailable in many parts of the world.provision for duty-free import of parts for yachts in transit. Some, Most fuel lls went as planned, but at times there were a few
Our approach to sea freight is to decide where we’re going to such as Fiji, required no paperwork, but a customs of cial had to challenges. Tonga, Rodrigues, and Cape Town, for example, only

be in three months and use that as a shipping destination. We then personally deliver the items to the boat for a nominal charge. In accepted cash in local currency for fuel purchases. In Tonga we
place our orders for delivery to our UPS store, which aggregates New Zealand and Australia, paperwork prepared by a customs used an agent who handled the fuel purchase on our behalf. For

all of the boxes onto a pallet. A regional transporter delivers the broker was required to import parts duty-free by pallet or in the other two we made ATM withdrawals in chunks over several
pallet to a Seattle freight-forwarder, which arranges transportchecked luggage through the airport.days and stored the cash in our onboard safe. For Rodrigues, we

withdrew Australian dollars in Darwin and converted the cash
to Mauritius Rupees upon arrival. For Cape Town, we withdrew
On the fuel dock in Cape Town, South Africa, prior to
departing for St. Helena. Cape Town was one of several Rand locally. An ATM card with a high daily limit and no foreign
places where the fuel company accepted only cash in the transaction fees was particularly useful here.

local currency.In Port Villa, Vanuatu, the fuel dock doesn’t keep enough fuel

on hand to ll our boat. We’d ordered the fuel in advance, but
they still had to order a truck to ll their tank once we’d arrived

at the dock. We would have preferred to take the fuel directly
from the truck since the marina tank was nearly empty and lling

it stirred up a lot of rust and sediment (although little water), but
that option wasn’t available.

The two most dif cult fuel lls of the trip were in Nuku Hiva,
French Polynesia, and in Rodrigues, Mauritius. In Nuku Hiva

we Med-moored in an open roadstead to prevent ocean surge
from slamming Dirona into the solid concrete dock and ran a

fuel hose a few feet across the water to the boat. Even though
we’d ordered the fuel ahead of time, we still had to negotiate to

get what we’d requested because a superyacht was attempting to
buy everything they had.

In Rodrigues, we spent the entire morning lling a multi-page

bunkering request document for the Port Captain, answering
questions, such as “number of tons of fuel needed” and “initial

and nal delivery pressures requested.” Once the Port Captain
approved that form, we then needed to deposit our Australian

cash directly into the fuel company’s bank account, who needed
to be present at the bank with us to approve the deposit. Then we

could nally take on fuel. The fuel truck arrived with only a four-
inch diameter hose used to bunker ocean-going freighters and no

nozzle to control the ow from their high-speed pump. We had
to gravity-feed to avoid spills and were lucky to complete the job

in just one day.

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