THE MARCO POLO
After coming to terms with my self-proclaimed obsession with the Polo we both knew we had to take any chance we could to unleash my canons on her way into port. Who knows when the next opportunity would arise? Like a bunch of pirates we planned our attack. There would be no room for mutiny or any scallywags on our crew, everything was going to have to be shipshape if we were going to capture this mighty bounty.
The CMA CGM Marco Polo is an Explorer class ship, an almighty 396 m or 1198-feet long and able to hold 16,000 twenty-foot-long containers. To put that into perspective, all lined up they would stretch 97 km. or 60 miles! Imagine 5.5 Airbus A380s all nose-to-tail and that is approximately the length of this ogre of a craft. Catching the Polo on her way into port would present a different challenge to the outbound departure. Luckily thanks to the live Marine Traffic web site I was able to keep track on every movement the Polo was making as it headed out of the Gibraltar Straights, round the coast of Portugal and up past Spain and France. Come the morning the Polo was due in, I could now tell she was off of Ventnor and reckoned I would be able to spot here from the cliffs in my local bay. Sure enough, through my binoculars I could make out the huge white CMA CGM on her hull as this wonder of a giant steamed across the horizon. Almost trembling, I grabbed my phone and informed Scott that the beast had arrived.