Continental Highway Car Carrier Ship is now coming into San Francisco

Hi all,

I've been tracking the Continental Highway Cargo ship on VesselTracker.com and it now shows the ship is about 100 miles directly east of the San Francisco Bay area. It will probably make it in sometime this evening (Saturday, 5/23/2009). I expect that taking the cars off the ship and onto car trailers will take several days and you won't see your cars until mid next week at the earliest and that's probably being a little optimistic. But, I could be wrong.

I know that the Continental Highway ship has my Barcelona Red, Bisque Interior, 2010 Prius model V (with navigation, not ATP) because I got the vessel name and other information from my dealer: Antioch Toyota.

For those anxiously awaiting your cars in the SF Bay area, and who knows where else they are going from here, it's not too long now.

 

Sorry, I meant to say 100 miles directly West of San Francisco Bay.

 

For those who can wait for their ship to come in... You can watch the Continental Highway real-time position (2-3 minutes delayed) on boatingsf.com. Click on the "Live ship positions" link under the "Ship Movements on San Francisco Bay" title. Then, click on the "Entire Region" link from the left-side selection bar. When the ship gets closer to the bay area, you can zoom in closer by selecting the "San Francisco Bay" or "Golden Gate" link. Zoom in again after that to whatever region of the bay that the ship is headed.

Right now, the ship is still a little ways from the pilot ship guiding it into the bay.

 

Also, there is a "Real-Time" and "Time-Lapse" toggle at the bottom of the map. Select "Real-Time" to watch the ships current position. The "Time-Lapse" option shows the last hour of motion of all ships in the area.

You can also view a single ships motion by selecting the "Choose Ship" checkbox and selecting the ship from the list that pops up. Unselect the "Choose Ship" checkbox to go back to watching all ships.

You can't tell that I'm excited to get my Prius!!! It also gives me something to do on a Saturday night.

 

Hi again,

Just an update on the Continental Highway Cargo ship's location.

It finally moved after being anchored in the San Francisco Bay for 2 days.

It is now moored at a port near the Benicia / Martinez Bridge (i-680) on the Delta.

So, I thought to myself, why is it there? So, I poked around for some webcams that may have been active in the area. Unfortunately, they are currently having problems, but I did find some interesting information about a company called Amports. There are 4 locations of Amports and one of them is in Benicia, CA. They have the facilities to process several hundred or thousands of cars. Here is an excerpt for the Benicia location found on amports.com:

AMPORTS Benicia is located 16 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge at the headwaters of San Francisco Bay, with easy access to I-80 for inland transportation. This port facility is comprised of 645 privately owned acres with 140,000 sq./ft. of vehicle processing buildings within the 4,000 acre Benicia Industrial park. The Benicia deepwater pier, measuring 2,401 ft. in length, is capable of berthing three vessels simultaneously. Vehicles trucked away to their destinations are staged two units deep to ensure easy access and safe loading in any one of the 26 truck carrier lanes. On terminal rail is provided by Union Pacific Railroad and can service 170 multilevel railcars simultaneously. This AMPORTS facility is paved, fenced, lighted, secured by 24-hour professional guard service and closed circuit TV cameras.

So, there you are, that is where your cars will be offloaded, processed, and transported within the next couple of days, that is if you are currently waiting for a car on this shipment from the Continental Highway.

They also customize cars at this location, so I presume that the Port Installed Accessories will probably be done here. For mine it will be the EF, DK, and CF accessories, which translates to Rear Bumper Applique, Preferred Owner's Portfolio, and the Carpet Floor Mat & Cargo Mat.

You can view photos of the Amports Benicia facility by going to this website: amports.com/locations.html#benicia, and you can also view the satellite image of the facility at Google Maps by putting in "Amports Benicia CA" and zoom in. If you go directly South from this facility on Google Maps, you can see the port where the Continental Highway is currently moored. It is just West (to the left of) the Benicia / Martinez Bridge.

 

The Continental Highway cargo ship has just left the San Francisco area and is on its way to Long Beach according to BoatingSF.com and VesselTracker.com. It's ETA into Long Beach is 5/27/2009 @ 2:00 pm.