OK, so Jay bugged me to start posting stuff to my F-22 blog, and asked where all my pictures were!
I'm not setting any records with the construction of my boat (maybe it will be a record for taking the longest to build an F-22), but that's one of the downsides to the expat life. I mentioned on Jay's blog that I had some similar problems importing my materials into China that he had importing his beams into the US... so here's the story (from 3 years back!) for all...
Ordering foam and fibreglass from Noah's in Canada seemed like it would be easy. That was until I tried to import it into China.The shipping agents who received the shipment in Shanghai (where I was living at the time) were very reluctant to clear the shipment, as they didn't understand what it was. Once I had spent a lot of time in their office describing the contents they decided I needed to visit the Chinese Customs office and get several of the forms approved by myself. Of course the folks at the Customs Office couldn't understand what the foam and fibreglass was either, and once I had been able to get them to understand what the materials were, they were then perplexed at why I would want to build my own "small sailing ship"! Several different supervisors needed to be called, as nobody wanted to take the responsibility of approving this unusual import. With the patient assistance of one of my work-mates (thanks Jake!) we finally created several more documents stating that the materials were for only one "small sailing ship" and that it was for my own personal use (ie: I was not going to build several ships and sell them commercially) and that I agreed not to import any diesel engines. This seemed to satisy one of the supervisors and he gave several documents "the chop" (he stamped them).Then we were off to the Shanghai Port Customs for the same level of discussion and confusion! And it was all on again at the Shanghai Port Quarantine office.All of this took place about 2 weeks before I was to move house from Shanghai to Antwerp, so I finally ended up getting the foam and fibreglass delivered to the warehouse where my household goods were being packed just in time to get them all into the same shipment. Getting the material into our Antwerp shipment was the first of the minor miracles!Once everything was finally unpacked in Antwerp I discovered that the packing had not been what I would have expected for an international shipment. So some of the foam was damaged, and the epoxy containers were in very poor condition... in fact I'm amazed that they had not leaked (check out the pictures below)... another minor miracle.
The picture shows my final result... my foam off-cuts from Noah's (24" x 48" sheets) finally unpacked in Belgium. This is just half of the foam for my F-22. I had the rest shipped to an address in Australia, as I don't expect to get the entire boat constructed while I"m living in Antwerp.
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