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Suez Canal blocked by huge container ship

sglowrider

sglowrider

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A giant container ship the length of four football pitches has become wedged across Egypt's Suez Canal, blocking one of the world's busiest trade routes.

Dozens of vessels are stuck, waiting for rescue boats to free the 400m-long (1,312ft) ship, which was knocked off course by strong winds.

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Egypt has reopened the canal's older channel to divert some traffic until the grounded ship can move again.

The blockage sent oil prices climbing on international markets.

The 200,000 tonne ship, built in 2018 and operated by Taiwanese transport company Evergreen Marine, ran aground and became lodged sideways across the waterway at about 07:40 local time (05:40 GMT) on Tuesday.
At 400m long and 59m wide, the ship has blocked the path of other vessels which are now trapped in lines in both directions.
The company that manages the container ship, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), has denied earlier reports that the ship had already been partially refloated.
In a statement, it said its "immediate priorities are to safely re-float the vessel and for marine traffic in the Suez Canal to safely resume".

Experts have warned the process could take several days.
 
sglowrider said:
A giant container ship the length of four football pitches has become wedged across Egypt's Suez Canal, blocking one of the world's busiest trade routes.

Dozens of vessels are stuck, waiting for rescue boats to free the 400m-long (1,312ft) ship, which was knocked off course by strong winds.

_117686605_9d7a3562-59e1-454a-ac31-88a108c54573.jpg


Egypt has reopened the canal's older channel to divert some traffic until the grounded ship can move again.

The blockage sent oil prices climbing on international markets.

The 200,000 tonne ship, built in 2018 and operated by Taiwanese transport company Evergreen Marine, ran aground and became lodged sideways across the waterway at about 07:40 local time (05:40 GMT) on Tuesday.
At 400m long and 59m wide, the ship has blocked the path of other vessels which are now trapped in lines in both directions.
The company that manages the container ship, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), has denied earlier reports that the ship had already been partially refloated.
In a statement, it said its "immediate priorities are to safely re-float the vessel and for marine traffic in the Suez Canal to safely resume".

Experts have warned the process could take several days.
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I've seen estimates of $400M per hour as the cost of the channel being closed, and it'll have some other medium-term weird effects like crowding the route around S. Africa and making China's belts and roads initiative look like an even better bet.
 
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Can't blame the next gas price jump on Biden.

This one is on Cap'n Crunch for texting while boating.
 
MyTeamIsOnTheFloor said:
Two ships in 2 canals and a virus can shut down world-wide commerce

We need a space force.
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But that's business optimisation in a capitalist system. Very little fat to give.

You design platforms, systems or business models that offer the cheapest, lowest and biggest bang for the buck.

Great in normal circumstances. But they aren't designed for once in a 100-year pandemic or duststorms like they faced -- or plan for shitty inept ship captains?
 
sglowrider said:
But that's business optimisation in a capitalist system. Very little fat to give.

You design platforms, systems or business models that offer the cheapest, lowest and biggest bang for the buck.

Great in normal circumstances. But they aren't designed for once in a 100-year pandemic or duststorms like they faced -- or plan for shitty inept ship captains?
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I highly doubt a man sitting in the captain's seat of such a collosal vessel is a "shitty inept ship captain".
 
I wish I understood more but I don't get the approach they're taking. Everything seems to be centered on freeing the bow, with that bulbous dolphin nose thingy that's stuck in the sand and mud. Why not instead concentrate on pulling/pushing the stern -- which is mainly just got slammed up against the opposite bank and is not really "stuck" -- back into the channel and then essentially backing the thing out and away from the bank that the bow is stuck into?
 
UncleMark said:
I wish I understood more but I don't get the approach they're taking. Everything seems to be centered on freeing the bow, with that bulbous dolphin nose thingy that's stuck in the sand and mud. Why not instead concentrate on pulling/pushing the stern -- which is mainly just got slammed up against the opposite bank and is not really "stuck" -- back into the channel and then essentially backing the thing out and away from the bank that the bow is stuck into?
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i'll tell you how dumb i am i never knew it was that damn narrow. hell of a thing for one of the world's busiest shipping lanes to be able to be blocked by a single ship
 
mcmurtry66 said:
i'll tell you how dumb i am i never knew it was that damn narrow. hell of a thing for one of the world's busiest shipping lanes to be able to be blocked by a single ship
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Hindisght 20-20 and all that, but from what I can gather they've never had a problem approaching anything like this before, that it simply has never been an issue. Perhaps in the future they might consider having tugboats or something alongside the vessel up close to the bow to assure it doesn't get too close to the bank.
 
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UncleMark said:
Hindisght 20-20 and all that, but from what I can gather they've never had a problem approaching anything like this before, that it simply has never been an issue. Perhaps in the future they might consider having tugboats or something alongside the vessel up close to the bow to assure it doesn't get too close to the bank.
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Based on this article, that probably wouldn't have been enough, a sudden change in wind that's enough to shove a container ship is going to shove that tug aside unless it's already pushing against that force. Looks like the problem might be that we still don't have a good enough understanding of fluid dynamics to predict the behavior of giant ships in small channels. https://www.ft.com/content/171c92ec-0a44-4dc5-acab-81ee2620d3c1 is the article, https://archive.is/rHatw is the archived version (missing images) in case you don't have a subscription to FT.
 
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I've been watching this story for a while. The sheer size of this ship is dazzling. I don't care how many "pitches" it is, it's over 1/4 mile long. It holds 20,000 containers, which is roughly the equivalent of a 50-mile, double-stacked train....and it's stuck in the middle of the desert. It weighs over 400 million pounds. It has an 80,000 hp engine and two 3,400 hp thruster engines for steering.

You can't safely unload it because it's too top-heavy and might roll. You can't just push it with tugboats because it's too stuck and weighs too much. You might be able to dig it out, but...
1616632406106.jpg
 
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mainway_toys said:
I've been watching this story for a while. The sheer size of this ship is dazzling. I don't care how many "pitches" it is, it's over 1/4 mile long. It holds 20,000 containers, which is roughly the equivalent of a 50-mile, double-stacked train....and it's stuck in the middle of the desert. It weighs over 400 million pounds. It has an 80,000 hp engine and two 3,400 hp thruster engines for steering.

You can't safely unload it because it's too top-heavy and might roll. You can't just push it with tugboats because it's too stuck and weighs too much. You might be able to dig it out, but...
1616632406106.jpg
Click to expand...
They're going to need to get a lot of camels to move that thing.
 
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mainway_toys said:
I've been watching this story for a while. The sheer size of this ship is dazzling. I don't care how many "pitches" it is, it's over 1/4 mile long. It holds 20,000 containers, which is roughly the equivalent of a 50-mile, double-stacked train....and it's stuck in the middle of the desert. It weighs over 400 million pounds. It has an 80,000 hp engine and two 3,400 hp thruster engines for steering.

You can't safely unload it because it's too top-heavy and might roll. You can't just push it with tugboats because it's too stuck and weighs too much. You might be able to dig it out, but...
1616632406106.jpg
Click to expand...

Singapore is the 2nd busiest port in the world. So you see these giant ships everyday.
The size of them are just crazy. Some are larger than an aircraft carrier as in the case of this ship. And it's just run by 20+ men.
 
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mainway_toys said:
I've been watching this story for a while. The sheer size of this ship is dazzling. I don't care how many "pitches" it is, it's over 1/4 mile long. It holds 20,000 containers, which is roughly the equivalent of a 50-mile, double-stacked train....and it's stuck in the middle of the desert. It weighs over 400 million pounds. It has an 80,000 hp engine and two 3,400 hp thruster engines for steering.

You can't safely unload it because it's too top-heavy and might roll. You can't just push it with tugboats because it's too stuck and weighs too much. You might be able to dig it out, but...
1616632406106.jpg
Click to expand...
Just by way of illustration; the suez here is said to be 600 feet wide. the mississippi at downtown saint louis is 1800 feet wide. it's incredible that the suez is so narrow given it's import
 
I find it incredible that the Suez even exists. Imagine cutting a 120 mile river through a desert in the mid-19th century.
 
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Probably a dumb question, but why not just back up another huge ship to it, find some big ass chains, and tow the thing out?

Edit-I notice Mark asked pretty much the same thing.
 
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