Where is CRXU9358170?

CRXU9358170 is the number of our shipping container and it hasn't been grabbed by Somali pirates, but it's starting to feel as if it might as well have been.

Back on the 7th of July, Dave posted about the 'short hop' remaining from Sydney to Auckland.  Hmm, clearly a kiss of death as the hop has been anything but short.  Thanks to the miracle of the interweb, we've been able to track the container's progress from Felixstowe, which it left on 14 May.  On 12 July it finally docked in Sydney (having meandered around Botany Bay for several days) and was offloaded for onward shipping to Auckland.  Now you'd have thought that any number of vessels would have been leaving Sydney for Auckland for that 'short hop' across the Tasman.  So we were a little puzzled when we discovered that CRXU9358170 was on a vessel heading to Bluff.  So you haven't heard of Bluff.  Very likely, its 1850 inhabitants are among the few people who have heard of it too.  Ok, we thought, so Bluff is the final destination, but when does the ship call at Auckland?   A spot of detective work revealed the horrid truth.  CRXU9358170 was going to do this:

Taking the scenic route

Yep, it was going the long way round, calling at Bluff and then at every port along the east coast of both islands, eventually stopping in Tauranga, a couple of hours south of Auckland.  At which point, the container gets unloaded and takes two to three days to travel the final 200km by rail.  Somewhere along the line the customs check has to take place too, so we're not looking at imminent delivery of our household possessions.

Things we have been missing: A List

1 our fridge, a big one that you can fit everything in without piling stuff on top of everything else and which doesn't freeze the things that get pushed to the back

2 a change of clothes

3 really mundane kitchen items like a cheesegrater and a potato masher.  I tried (once) mashing spuds with a fork but it just didn't do and now I dream of mounds and mounds of fluffy mash.  Mmmmmm

4 a plentiful supply of mugs so we can be more slobby and not wash up the whole time

5 my antique Kenwood mixer so that things like making bread and pastry aren't quite such an effort.  Have you tried making pastry by hand recently?  Crikey, the rubbing in is hard work!

6 wine glasses.  There is just something wrong with swigging wine out of china mugs.

7 Reuben's doctor kit.  It's a yellow case containing a toy blood pressure cuff, some plastic syringes and a real stethoscope.  Don't know why he's been pining for this specifically.  Dave brought home some tweezers and artery clamps from work (unused) as an interim measure.  We told Reuben that these were real surgery tools like Fulvio used and that impressed him.  Briefly.  The clamps were later used for poking a lump of playdough.