WorldWide Drilling Resource

by Tim Rasmussen Water For Life just finished loading another container for shipment to Guatemala. It is loaded with material to support our work, along with donat- ed medical equipment headed for the Ministry of Health in the Petén region, and for other groups who are working to make a difference in the lives of the people in the area. The containers we ship are the lifeblood of our work. We constantly need equipment to support our drilling rigs. This means tools, compressors, generators, pallets of bentonite, galvanized pipe, steel well casings, pumps, PVC pipe, stainless steel fittings, nuts and bolts, wrenches, etc. - EVERYTHING is carefully weighed and cataloged. The containers themselves are somewhat special. We use high cube containers, certified as suitable for ocean shipping. The containers arrive and we have two hours to load, or we will be charged for extra time. We have never made it in two hours, but we also have never had to pay extra. The containers are loaded right to the doors. Our crew of volunteers pack them tight, not only to get in as much as we can, but to pack them so there will be no shifting of the contents. This year, there were 170 boxes of donated hospital linens packed into every conceivable crevice as the heavier material was placed. These boxes cushion everything against move- ment. I believe you could turn the container upside down and it would pretty much stay the way it is inside. The containers are carried by truck to the Port of Seattle, where they are placed aboard a very large container ship for the first part of the voyage. This year, the ship is the Conti Courage , an MSC ship. It is a large container ship. The largest of these ships can carry up to 18,000 containers onboard. I am able to track the voyage of the ship carrying our precious mate- rial as it makes its way from Seattle to Oakland, to Long Beach, and then to Panama. I enjoy watching where it is daily. Our cost for shipping from Seattle to the east coast of Guatemala is usually about $5000 and takes about 40 days from port to port. Sometimes the cost is a little more, but usually not less. It does not seem to matter whether the container is a full weight or not. I think an empty one would probably cost as much. After the shipping where the costs and progress are known, comes the mystery of the import process. The container sits in the port. How long? No one can predict. For the port, the longer the better, because they charge $140 per day. It is usually about a week, so we figure about $1000 for port charges waiting for us to work out the details of the importation. We 57 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® DECEMBER 2019 WTR Rasmussen cont’d on page 58.