Black Sea Ferries
 

Has anyone used any of the Black Sea ferries to travel across to Batumi/Poti, Georgia, from either Ukraine or Bulgaria recently (2019 or pre Covid 2020)? Is booking a space reasonably straight forward, are delays to sailing times a common occurance, would you recommend their use, or any other information you deem useful would be appreciated?

Alternatively, have you had your motorcycle tansported from northern Europe (pref UK) by road or air to Georgia? Again any advice and recommendations would be very useful.

I hope I am not being too optimistic in planning to travel mid/late May 21.

Many thanks

If your primary goal is to ride Georgia on two wheels (and you're not interested in the journey there and back), consider flying there and renting a bike locally. It feels expensive but it often turns out not to be.

Shipment on a truck should be doable in terms of getting a local freight forwarder to book you two europallets' worth of trailer space. But from the UK, your vehicle will be crossing multiple borders (out of UK into EU, out of EU into Turkey, out of Turkey into Georgia) without the owner present - that means you will need to clear customs at the destination freight terminal, and probably arrange some unusual paperwork for the truck driver, etc.

Contact the Tbilisi HU Community, see if they can help. Also I'd fly not ship by truck, as AnTyx notes, could be a lot of issues. However you get it there - assuming you do - please put your info in the Shipping Database!

I presume you've seen the information on Black Sea ferries on the Caravanistan site -

https://caravanistan.com/transport/black-sea-ferries/ if you haven't

Grant, now submitted a request. Thanks for the prompt.

Backofbeyond, I have seen that website, thanks. The time involved for the return crossings with a flexible schedule means the ferries appear not to be a viable option as I fear I shall still be working next year.

FWIW in fall of 2019 I shared a room with 3 ukrainian truck drivers on ferry from azerbaijan to Kazakhstan; they told me that ferry from odessa to Georgia was much nicer and like this one was filled up with ukrainian trucks as russia didn't let loaded trucks through. The situation changed a month later ukraine/russia strike transit agreement and it should have had impact on ferry operation.

I don't believe the CV situation will be resolved by May and then the ferry would be in service but maybe it will if russia impose restrictions. Your best bet to take one from Varna or just ride through turkey though turkey/Georgia border was closed since April..

I did it.

And it was kind of straight forward.

I contacted UKR Ferry over they website with email.
Vladen replied and we made everything with mail.

Then I got to the company, paid for the ticket and got information, what to do next.

It depends, what kind of cabin you book.

We went from Ukraine to Poti.

The ferry itself is ok, bit old but OK, you get 3 meals a day and they have a bar for drinks.
And with the truckers, you might have a lot of fun....beer

It is possible, that there are delays.
That depends on the ports too, we had 1 day delay, because the port was full of ships.

and yes, its much better than the ferry from Aserbaidschan to Kazakhstan, did this one too....

Well the truckers told me that one from AZ to KZ is much worse, so keep it in mind if you decide to use it. How much was it, $230?

Az to KZ was around 180 $

Ukraine to Poti I have to look, not sure, but might be around 230 $

Depends on the room too.