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suez canal blocked
- Thread starter jstert
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Unless Egypt has a whole bunch of Sikorsky Sky Cranes available, I don’t think there’s a way to get those containers off. The banks of the canal appear to be all sand, and that ship is HUGE-the top level of containers is several hundred feet high! Unless the high tide frees it, or there is some other way to raise the water level in the canal, they’re going to have to keep digging.
Seal off the canal on both sides of the ship like canal locks, then pump in water. How high do you have to raise the water level? A foot?
I'm sure they thought of that but that idea occurred to me, too. I thought these types of canals had gates in them to raise or lower the water level as the ships traveled through. Or was that just the Panama canal? But either remove the sand or dam it on both sides and flood it and lift the ship up.
It is a bit humorous that with all the technology in the world today that this seemingly simple matter has us stumped. Also, I don't understand how the "high winds" that "caused" this were only 30 mph. Surely, they don't shut down the Suez Canal when the winds hit 30 mph, do they?
The ship is huge and weighs about 220,000 us tons. A large D9 Cat has a maximum tractive effort of about 72 tons. It just won't work.
The Suez Canal has no locks, and the shores are mostly sand, I’m not sure how they could raise water levels enough without flooding the surrounding area. It would probably take walling off both ends of the canal and the sides all around the ship to pump in water. Container ships have gotten so big that it’s really difficult to do anything with them when they run aground.
He meant several as in 3,055 bulldozers. 220,000/72=3,055. That would be enough to move the ship if it weren’t stuck so add in another 1,000 or so and that should do it.
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I was working at DSME when Maersk was building a series of the 10 largest … absolutely stunning but yes … they rely on bridge cranes lifts …Most container ships either don’t have cranes, or, if they do, are only able to get the container onto the pier right next to the ship.
A big crane that can reach to the far side, or even middle, of this ship is a shore installation- you won’t see one on another ship.
From what I can see of this one, it’s “gearless”, that is, no cranes. This is the more common configuration. Cheaper to build. More container capacity. More economical in operation. The bigger the ship, the more likely it goes into major ports and it doesn’t need an on board cargo handling ability.
So, it can’t off load to a barge next to it, and no other container ship has the reach to take containers off it. I suspect there isn’t a barge big enough to float a crane with enough swing and weight capacity to offload the ship on site. The Suez isn’t that wide, they don’t have a lot of room to pull up next to this thing.
Container ship - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
I have seen crawler cranes used for smaller ships and it was a ballast juggling act … they would keep the shipped trimmed to favor the crane. Not doable here. I have also worked some very large crawler cranes … some that travel with other cranes to rig them up. They often need spreads of heavy plate steel to augment the quayside load/square meter ratings.
The largest cranes suffer from their own boom weight at a given radius … not easy either …
Looks like in normal operation, once the ship nears the canal, it's placed on a queue until it's the ships time to voyage through it.
Interesting video on the toll cost to go through the canal, fuel cost savings.. .
Interesting video on the toll cost to go through the canal, fuel cost savings.. .
There's good hope they will get it free today, but if not the plan B is to put smaller container vessels alongside and move containers onto them
And cargo ship is almost a quarter mile long. This will be a big mess to fix.
This event reminds me how fragile our econosystem is and how very easy it would be for evil-doers to disrupt life.
That would take years. Years of earth moving.
Followed by years of pumping billions of acre-feet of water to raise the Suez one foot.
To float one ship?
Seriously. How long and how many pumps to raise a canal that is 120 miles long?
In the desert. So, don’t forget evaporative losses....
A bunch of hand wringing going on. It’s not the end of the world. Your tennis shoes will still be in stock at your local store.
Do we know the whole story on this? Much like speculating on airline crashes, this one should wait until we know the whole story.
Do we know the whole story on this? Much like speculating on airline crashes, this one should wait until we know the whole story.
I said, Seal off the canal on both sides of the ship. As in a few feet behind and in front of it. On The Curse of Oak Island, they sealed off an entire bay or cove in a few days so they could examine the area without the ocean there. Couldn't be much harder here.
That ship should have some pretty big anchors, which means it has pretty strong winches to pull those anchors. And im guessing the anchor chains are strong enough to hold the ship. Drop anchor onto boats and have them drop them into the canal at a further point..and have the winches to pull on the anchors. Or drop anchors on land? Have tugs from behind pushing while the ships winches pull. No idea if its structurally possible but thats what i would do if i was stuck in a 4X4.
Or tie them off to the nearest palm tree.
I wonder if they could use giant air bags around the sides. I have heard they can raise sunken ships with air bags. If they only need to raise it slightly so tugs could pull it free but it really depends on how badly its grounded.
I think it's a lot more complicated than it seems. The article Astro posted indicated 2 tanks had taken on water (I'm guessing they are flooded), and there were rock formations that interfered with moving the bow. I assume the tank flooding involved hull damage.
Tug on that sucker the wrong way and rip open the hull more and then where would you be? A grounded ship of that size may take a few weeks to move. A sunk one might take the better part of a year.
Tug on that sucker the wrong way and rip open the hull more and then where would you be? A grounded ship of that size may take a few weeks to move. A sunk one might take the better part of a year.
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