Suez Canal

[Midnightsun]

What a disaster. Mind boggling that a stuck boat causes over 6 billion $ a day in delays. Never thought so many containers could fit on 1 boat then again i have a 41 CMY and just one container on it would most likely cause it to sink. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/score ... suez-canal

[buster53]

About 15 years ago, I watched a show on TV about shipping and container ships. If I recall, the ship they were talking about, it you took all the containers it held and placed them end to end, they would stretch over 25 miles. The ships they are making these days dwarf the ships of 15-20 years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if the containers would now stretch 35-40 miles.

Edit...
Just did some googling and the biggest container ship can carry 24000, 20’ containers.
End to end, 24000 containers would stretch over 86 miles.

Also, I read yesterday that the Suez Canal handles a full 10% of worldwide trade. That is a s..t load of cargo ships, as well as military and other ships.

[pepmyster]

Very strange situation. Seems easy enough to free a ship, but obviously not. I'm sure they got the right people there to handle this.

[bud37]

That's a huge mass to stop.....it looked like it was buried in the bank. It will be interesting to see how they make the ship lighter if they have to......

[km1125]

They should fill all the containers with helium to make the ship lighter!!!

It would seem using several waterjets under the boat could dig out a pretty big trench quickly, but getting several of those to the location quickly would definitely be an issue. Plus, all that sand that you scoured out of there would end up probably causing many sandbars further down the line that would have to be dredged out.

I understand one of the biggest hurdles to doing something soon down there is just access. No way to get tons of heavy equipment there quickly in any form, due to the remote location.

[Cooler]

Now you also know why there is an increased number of container "accidents" occurring in the oceans. In my working days, we were waiting for a shipment of apparel to arrive via cargo ship. The container was onboard when the ship left the export, but did not show at the import end. The bad news is if those containers are not filled efficiently, then they float for long periods of time and miles. Could you imagine the sound of hitting one of those things at night? Man that would suck. 400 miles out to sea and bang! er

[Viper]

Well, here we go again with shortages and price hikes

[RGrew176]

A costly mistake for the company that owns that particular boat.

[uchu]

Open, at last:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/suez ... e-n1262453

Quite a feat of naval engineering for the salvage company that managed to make the huge containership float again.

[RGrew176]

I would think that the captain of the ship that blocked the canal his career is over.