To start the process, we contacted three freight forwarders for quotes to take Wyvonne, our 1951 Vauxhall Wyvern tourer, from Fremantle to Long Beach, California. They varied from the sublime to the ridiculous but in the end, we opted to ship her on a Ro Ro car carrier. In the meantime, online research had revealed that we would need permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before she would be allowed to roll a wheel in the Land of the Free (and would also need Customs and Border Protection approval on arrival) so we start the ball rolling with a letter of application to the EPA.

 

The research also told us that we would need permission to bring her back into Australia (why??) and our next step was to fill out the necessary forms for a Vehicle Import Approval. There followed many frustrating days waiting for the bureaucratic rubber stamps but eventually the (conditional) approval letter arrived – tick that one off the list.

 

James, our friendly freight forwarder suggested that we should get a Carnet de Passage (which we would come to realise we needed) as it would help ease some of the import processes on the return to Oz. So, fill in another form and part with a large fee, wait for ages, make several phone calls, send emails and eventually the Carnet arrives a day or two before the ship is due to sail.

 

While this form filling and waiting had been going on, we had been trying to obtain insurance in the U.S. We went up many blind alleys and most companies didn’t want to know but, just as we were about ready to call the whole thing off, we found a specialist motor vehicle insurer which was happy to help – breathe a sigh of relief and tick that one off.

 

Now it’s time to book the flights. The shipping schedule showed that the vessel “Tamesis” which started its journey in Auckland would arrive in Fremantle on the 22nd May and would reach Long Beach by the 25th June. We’d been told that EPA and CBP clearance in the U.S. could take one to two weeks but as we wanted to visit Marie’s cousin Fran who lives in Rocklin which is not far out of Sacramento we booked flights to San Francisco (that would get us there on the 25th) where we would hire a car, visit Fran in Rocklin and then drive south to Long Beach over the course of a few days by which time the car should be ready for collection – easy peasy.

 

Wrong! The good ship Tamesis had been delayed and didn’t depart Fremantle until the 26th May with a new ETA in Long Beach on the 29th June. Not a problem, we’ll just change the flights to arrive in “San Fran” on the 29th provided the cost of the change isn’t too great. As it happened the fare increase equated to the savings realised from four nights hotel accommodation that we wouldn’t incur so, as they say in the business world, it was cost neutral and we made the change.

 

Marie then began to arrange an itinerary that would see us in Lincoln, Nebraska on the 25th of July to participate in our first car event, the Street Rodder magazine Speedway Motors Road Tour to the NSRA Nationals. She spent many, many hours developing a schedule that would allow us to visit places of interest as we crossed the country from California to Nebraska and booked appropriate accommodation along the route. Then the sailing schedule began to slip with the Long Beach ETA moving out to the 4th July, then the 9th July and finally the 11th July throwing all the careful planning out of the window and potentially jeopardising our chances of making it to Lincoln by the 25th if CBP clearance ran to the full two weeks.