Shipping News

The screen shows hundreds of little arrows in different colors.

I zoom out and the arrows are packed like sardines in a can. Which isn’t right. Can’t be right. The ships can’t be that close together. The Blue Car won’t be safe if they are.

I calm down and remind myself that this is just a trick of scale. Those arrows are much smaller in real life than they appear on the screen.

Forget Instagram. Porsche Facebook groups have gone unnoticed. Since Monday, I have been fixated on the newest app on my phone. Orange arrows? Tankers. Green signifies passenger vessels such as ferries and cruise ships. Blue denotes fishing boats of the large kind (think trawlers). And most interesting of all are the yellow arrows: cargo ships.

There is one yellow arrow that is most important of all—the MSC Florentina. The screen shows that it is just south of Virginia Beach, its intended route marked as a dashed red line of hope and possibility.

Vessel Finder tells me that the Blue Car’s next stop is Savannah. But of course, that satellite position was updated 18 hours ago. Surely, it’s closer than that!? It’s due at the port today at 2 p.m.

My fascination with this new world of ships, ports, deadweight tonnage, and bills of lading is growing by the day. I have researched terms and studied ship descriptions. Deadweight tonnage sounds ominous but is simply the total weight capacity of a ship, measured in metric tonnes (2,204.6 pounds), including all cargo, crew, equipment, fuel, and the ship itself. Lading is a term that was first used in the year 1500 and means the process of loading cargo onto a ship or other vessel. Think “ladling gravy onto your Thanksgiving turkey.”

But most of all, I am simply fascinated by those little arrows on the screen, pointing in the direction they are moving. It all looks so much like a video game.

I stink at video games.

When I dropped off the Blue Car on January 14 near the Port of Newark/New York, it was loaded into a high-cube container with two other cars. And then it waited. The Florentina’s arrival from France was delayed because of a snowstorm and then, instead of heading straight back across the Atlantic to Le Havre, it went south to Virginia Beach, back north to Baltimore, and now is on its way south again to Savannah.

I am rotten at playing video games because my hand-eye coordination is not great with a joystick. My children have never given up hope (for which I am grateful), but we usually don’t last long in a game before they shake their heads and give me a pitiful look, ending all joy.

And now I am feeling inept while looking at these arrows on Vessel Finder—not because I have the video controls in my hand and can’t make them work, but because I don’t even have the controller. Will there be another storm? Will Savannah be backlogged, or will the workers take an unexpected day off? Will the computer systems be down?

As much as I work at this, sometimes I am just not good at being patient. I must fight my urge to push things along instead of waiting for them to work themselves out. It’s been just over two years since this trip became a glimmer of an idea. It’s all so close: I leave one week from today. It became very real when I got the notice from the shippers that the Blue Car had left port, but suddenly after a week of far too much time on Vessel Finder, I have this funny and very irrational (can something be very irrational?) fear that the MSC Florentina is simply going to move back and forth along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and never cross the Atlantic again. A bit like Groundhog Day for container ships—and the Blue Car.

There is something more than impatience in my desire to see that little yellow arrow point east and cross the Atlantic. I am also annoyed with myself for not understanding how this all works from the start. I thought shipping time was determined by when the Blue Car got into a container. But I now know there are many other factors affecting the car’s arrival date in Le Havre—things like which ship is actually booked for the journey, something they don’t arrange until they have the cargo (the Blue Car) in hand. And then there’s the question of route. It’s not a simple back-and-forth between Le Havre and Newark/New York.

And the real determinant of shipping time isn’t even the ship. It’s the ports. I now know that U.S. ports struggle with capacity, aging infrastructure, labor shortages, and a host of other challenges that lengthen wait times for berthing windows and slow unloading.

And in case this is more than you ever wanted to know about shipping, that’s just the tip of the iceberg (a bad choice of word, I know). Using time I don’t really have (there are still many things on my to-do list), I spent the last week learning tidbits such as the fact that the carrying capacity of the largest container ships equals 44 miles of freight train.

Most relevant of all? The engine of the MSC Florentina likely has at least 1,250 times more power than the Blue Car.

That last fact brings me to a full halt this morning, and I turn off my web browser and the Vessel Finder app on my phone.

That’s the lesson here, isn’t it? There are forces at work that have much more power and momentum than little old me and my desire to start my trip as soon as possible with an intact and happy Blue Car.

After shutting down the app and website (but not before seeing that the Florentina’s ETA into Savannah is now delayed by a day), I take a deep breath and laugh out loud. Leo looks up at me with his usual quizzical expression, but he is used to my eccentricities.

All this research—the tracking of the Blue Car’s position, the obsessing over what my actual road-trip start date will be—is starting to resemble tactics my former self used to cope with uncomfortable realities and distract me from difficult things. Tactics to wrest control of uncontrollable things.

I really don’t want to go back there.

Hence the laugh that wakes Leo from his doggy slumber. And my realization that, in the big scheme of things, this doesn’t even register on the scale of uncomfortable or difficult. Instead, I will use this as good practice for the road trip itself, whenever the hell it starts.

What I am practicing here is not patience, exactly. It’s something harder: the willingness to feel unsettled without immediately reaching for a distraction that gives me the illusion of agency. The app, the research, the constant checking—none of it actually moves the ship or protects the Blue Car. It just gives my anxious mind something to do.

I’ve learned this about myself the hard way: when I feel powerless, I reach for complexity. If I can understand every variable, track every movement, anticipate every delay, then maybe I won’t have to sit with the simple truth that some things unfold on their own timetable, indifferent to my plans.

I recognize the stakes are tiny here. But I am still pleased that this time, I noticed it sooner. And that noticing is the real work—work that I think will come in handy when the trip starts. Because after all, the Blue Car will have been sitting for more than six weeks by the time I pick it up. Anything might greet me at the port in Le Havre (portable battery jumper, anyone?).

Now that I have been able to take a step back and regain perspective, I am thinking mostly about the Blue Car and what it must be like in that container. After all, it’s not just cargo; it’s my companion for this adventure. I hope the Blue Car has good company during its circuitous journey. Maybe its neighbors in that cozy box are the Ferrari I saw at the shippers in Newark, or the fellow Porsche a few cars down in that lot. It probably has its sea legs now and will be prepared when the Florentina is on the open waters heading toward France.

I will have about three weeks of travel under my belt by the time we reunite—maybe more. I know the Blue Car won’t begrudge that, after two weeks in London, I will start my road trip with a rental, exploring WWII history in Normandy without its company. When the video controller isn’t in our hands, it’s best to regroup and focus on what we can manage on our own instead of obsessing over what is missing or lost. When we do reunite, I think the ride will be that much sweeter for the wait.

And it’s hard to believe, but when I write again next week, it will be my day of departure.

No matter where the Blue Car is within that video game of Find the Vessel, I will still be leaving.