Day: February 5, 2026

I’ve been following the progress of the CMA CGM CEDRUS, the ship bringing my mini excavator from China, for the past few days and it has been maintaining a steady course of 249/250 degrees at a speed of about 20 knots for the whole of the time. This has taken it further and further away from the direct course from Singapore to the Suez Canal and I’ve become more convinced as time has passed that although it hasn’t been on the direct course to the Cape of Good Hope on the tip of South Africa it will end up taking that route to Valencia.

And so it has been confirmed this evening as the latest route forecast for the vessel now shows.

I think there may be two reasons for this. The first is that this route will avoid any complications that might arise in the Middle East due to the unstable situation in Iran. However, as previous images have shown, although I have no experience to judge whether this is so or not, the volume of traffic heading up to the Suez Canal looks to me to be pretty heavy and if so, this could lead to possible congestion and delay.

On balance, therefore, the owners of the CMA CGM CEDRUS may have decided that as the costs of taking ‘the long way round’ were factored in when the voyage was commenced it would be prudent to stick to the original route plan. What this might mean for the arrival date of my machine in Marseille remains to be seen as to date there has been one day of slippage in the schedule.