Saturday 14th February

Four years ago today a number of us were standing on the Docks in Kuching awaiting the arrival of the ship carrying the cars participating in the Borneo Experience. Today the vanguard of your Committee in the form of Peter and Diana Cameron and Diana Chambers and Richard Smith left Gatwick for Doha. After a very pleasant flight with the usual excellent service from Qatar Airways they arrived in Doha ready to begin the final round of meetings to tie up loose ends and to ensure that arrangements are in place to make your stay in Qatar and the tour in general a memorable experience for everyone.

Monday 16th February

The vanguard was strengthened today with the arrival of Tony and Trudy Copsey, Dennis Haynes and Petrina Walls. While meetings with various organisations have continued focus is now being turned to rechecking pace notes, visiting proposed excursion sites, and finalising details for display of cars at events. Important meetings with media were arranged to ensure that the Tour receives the publicity it deserves.

Tuesday 17th February

Jeremy Barker of Cars UK arrived this evening and will get to work tomorrow to locate the containers containing cars from Australia and Singapore which have arrived at Doha Port. Much has still to be done to ensure that the processes with Customs and Ports are fine tuned to obtain the release of the cars when they arrive. We expect to unload the Aegean Leader at 7 am on 21st February.

Thursday 19th February

We feel the Tour is slowly starting with the arrival of six participants yesterday. The Anderssons, Dingemans and Veens are with us and the men have been chain ganged into assisting us to unoad cars when the ship arrives.

Friday 20th February

Early this morning the faithful Lee Lee and Juliet arrived from Malaysia to take up their duties to man the Secretariat. The Committee vanguard have now moved to the Four Seasons in the terms of our contract with them. We have been informed that the Aegean Leader is due to dock at 2000hrs this evening and then we can start unloading the cars at 0700hrs tomorrow morning. After a Committee meeting this afternoon, to plan for our movements tomorrow, we happened to look out to sea and lo and behold the vessel was entering the Port at 1600hrs! So all systems are go for the morning.

Saturday 21st February

Many of you may have thought that the 6th June 1944 was the longest day. Well I can tell you it definitely wasn’t! Your intrepid Committee members, plus participants who had arrived early , went to the Port at 0715 hrs. to start unloading the cars. With our experience and efficient approach we had completed the task by 0915 hrs. to enable the ship to sail on schedule. Then the process of completing documentation and passing it from Department to department started and there was little for us to do but sit and wait patiently for the Gate passes to allow the cars to exit the Port. I must say we had no problems with the Customs etc. but the process stymied their best intentions. We finally got the first Gate passes at 1830 hrs and then had to take five cars out at a time as they needed Trade plates to exit and we only had five! By the time we started this process we had to rustle up responsible volunteers to help to ferry the cars back to the Four Seasons Hotel. Even with this additional help we didn’t get the last car to the Hotel until midnight! Needless to say everyone needed some liquid sustenance before going to bed for a well earned rest.
So there will be no coach trip to the Docks as it would have been impossible to get Security passes for one hundred and fifty individuals to enter the Port. So you are lucky and can rest easy that all your cars are safely garaged.