suez canal blocked
- Thread starter jstert
- Start date
Several issues with what you say:
1. “Lose his license” - we don’t know what happened. Could be pilot (yes, the harbor pilot was driving, not the Captain, so you really mean the pilot in this case) error. Could be mechanical failure.
2. Could be that the canal should be closed to ships of this size when the wind is gusting to 40 knots. They may simply be uncontrollable in a shamal, and we’ve been lucky before. Kind of like Windshear. Until Delta lost a whole L-1011 with everyone on board, we didn’t understand how dangerous it was to airplanes.
3. You can only helicopter off the top containers. They’re locked down, on top of each other. Connected to each other. Sliding them past each other with a helicopter is incredibly dangerous. You need a crane for that, not an aircraft. So, once you find a container that’s too heavy, and the Bill of lading should tell you that, you’re unloading by hand, on the top layer of the stack.
4. If you onload equipment, there is no deck to speak of on this ship, so that equipment will be sitting on other containers. Not a smooth surface, nor a contiguous one. There are gaps between them. So, you can’t drive a forklift around on them, like you would on a loading dock. Still looking at unloading by hand.
Take a look at a TEU and then look at how they’re loaded. I’m not certain that it is even possible to open the doors when they’re loaded on a ship.
Twenty-foot equivalent unit - Wikipedia
5. The scale works against you. There are over 20,000 containers. Unloading them, as pointed out earlier, would take weeks to do with helicopter, if you can even get them off. No, you can’t use more than one helicopter on each container and there are limits to how many helicopters can occupy the same airspace without causing collision. The USN is very, very good at moving things between ships by helicopter (now V-22 as well), but the TEUs are far heavier than the pallets we moved, and we limited the number of helos in the pattern for VERTREP.
Ultimately, the Egyptian authorities focused on moving earth, and moving the ship, not unloading it. Probably for good reason.
Looking ahead, they also started widening the canal. Probably also for good reason. The wider the canal, the less of that suction and pressure effect from the displacement of water, and the lower the risk of losing control in strong winds.
Before the widening is done, I think restrictions on sailing size above a certain amount of wind would be prudent. Ships of these size are new. The risk hasn’t been assessed properly because shippers pressure crews all the time to keep schedule. Schedule is money.
Shipping is far cheaper than over the road trucking, where there are roads on which to put trucks.
Where would those trucks go? From Egypt to? Across the Sinai to?
Most of those ships are going between Europe and Asia.
Not exactly an easy drive. In fact, there is no way to drive from where those ships are anchored, waiting, to final destination.
The container ships on which the goods are loaded are still the fastest way to get the cargo to destination.
To unload the TEUs in port, then drive them, would take months, if you could even get there. There are no autobahnen, no interstate highways, through the Middle East, or most of Asia.
How did it get stuck, and sideways at that?
There is a difference between driving a car on solid pavement versus a boat or ship on the water. Wind and currents have a huge impact on your steerage.
As an example, 40 some odd years ago in Newport Oregon I was on a Coast Guard lifeboat responding to a fishing vessel that had lost power a few miles north of the bar. Two 44 footers went out in 75 knot winds but were unable to tow due to the conditions. I was on our 52 footer which was a heavy duty rescue boat. When we caught up with everyone we were just south of Lincoln City. You can check a map to see the difference.
A vessel on the water provides no resistance to wind. On the open sea and cruising in a stiff winds, you will see how your vessel gets blown off track so you have to correct to stay on a rough course. In a situation like the Suez Canal that has to be very tricky.
They may have to consider limitations based on weather. These big container ships provide a huge sail area so even a light wind like 20 knots will have some effect.
Soak the sandy banks at the bow and stern of the ship with WD-40!
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
I'm guessing you've never piloted an inboard boat. This is kind of like that, but like next level sort of thing.
I have significant experience operating inboards in the wind and it is NOT a fun experience trying to dock them. On a calm day? Aim for the slip, slowly glide in, touch reverse to stop, easy peasy. In the wind? approach from a position higher, as the wind will push you down, maintain a higher rate of approach to keep straight and then plan on being able to nail reverse to stop. It's a bit of an art.
So, trying to run down a canal that's this narrow in a boat that is very similar in operation, in the wind, yes, you'd need to maintain a higher speed to keep it straight. If it got a little sideways and clipped that shallow bit, it would easily pull it sideways like it ended up.
The canal should definitely be wider, or they need to restrict the size of craft able to traverse it in high winds.
Going over land is a long and difficult journey. In the Middle Ages everyone would over-estimate the distance, leading makers of maps and globes to place Japan much closer to the west coast of Europe than it actually is. Yes in that time scholars understood that the Earth was round, and knew very closely how large it was-- but what was not known was the actual distance from Europe to Asia.
So Columbus had a map that showed Japan should be approximately where Mexico actually is(*), and he tried to sail right to it.
* This is also a big error in lattitude, which the navigators of the day should have known better. Lattitude is possible to dead-reckon from the stars, longitude isn't.
* In order to secure backing for the journey, Columbus would have an incentive to promote the most optimistic data, i.e. those which suggested Japan via the Atlantic really wasn't very far.
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I tried to explain that.
The ship displaces water.
That water displacement causes high pressure on the bow, and low pressure (suction) between ship and bank. It’s called bank effect.
The wider the ship in relation to the canal, the greater this effect. The low pressure is the result of water that the ship displaced, flowing past the ship to fill in behind it. The faster this flow, the lower the pressure, so, of the ship is closer on one side than the other, there is a pressure differential. Closer it gets, the worse the effect.
This very big ship was going through the canal during severe weather. Wind pushes the ship to the side. The ship steers “into” the wind to keep from hitting the bank. It’s sailing at an angle. To have enough rudder control to counter that wind pressure, they had to go faster. More water over the rudder increases its effectiveness.
But faster increases bank effect.
The best guess is that when it got close to the bank, bank effect pulled the stern towards the bank, and the high pressure on the bow pushed towards the opposite bank.
A ship of this size takes miles to stop. Miles. It’s hundreds of millions of pounds of mass, so if it became unstable in a narrow canal, there isn’t anything they could do. Cargo alone on this ship was about 200,000 tons. So, 400 million pounds of cargo, give or take.
Ship handling isn’t anything like driving. Ships move through a fluid. That fluid moving in the canal creates forces that you wouldn’t expect, unless you were a ship driver. The bigger the ship (and this one is big), the greater the effect. The bigger the ship in relation to the canal, the greater the effect.
Throw in heavy weather, and it becomes a huge challenge.
Unless there is a true error committed, I think this needs to be chalked up to the learning curve of dealing with ships of this size. I suspect neither the channel captains, nor the ship's captain have a great deal of experience going through the Suez with something so massive. This incident is part of the establishment of procedures when it comes to this class of container ships. Maybe the canal needs some updates. Maybe certain weather conditions preclude passage. Some root cause analysis and preventative updates will certainly follow.
I agree.
Particularly about the pilots, like many harbors, the Suez likely requires one of their pilots on board for navigation. So, I think it’s really a matter of training Egypt’s own pilots who are, ostensibly, already expert at navigating this stretch of water.
And in 2105, Egypt began widening the canal.
Just bring back the canal ox. We're all in such a rush these days.
4WD
$50 site donor 2024
Two factors in most “fits” … ships are not on rails and when they get this large there is little room for error or the unexpected forces working inside something this narrow …
I see traffic on the ICW all the time … it’s often dredged so barges/tugs can pass in opposite directions at economic speed.
I see traffic on the ICW all the time … it’s often dredged so barges/tugs can pass in opposite directions at economic speed.
Sorry, I didn't read your original reply.
No worries. Don’t claim to know precisely what happened.
Seen enough ship driving to know it ain’t easy n
Seen enough ship driving to know it ain’t easy n
There were a couple articles that seem to claim that the pilots don't really do anything and it's the captains that steer the ship. Like they're part of the fee that gets charged for moving through the canal.
Fascinating. Very different than the pilots that I've seen in other harbors...
That certainly doesn't help the risk management...
There's a few accounts from some captains that say they don't do anything.
I've sailed the Suez canal on a cargo ship – it's no wonder the Ever Given got stuck | Rose George
Researching the global shipping industry, I saw how modern mega-vessels offer the efficiency consumers demand – at a price, says Rose George, author of Ninety Percent of Everything
www.theguardian.com
So now there will be an extra charge to have tugs accompany any large ship through the south end to assist before they hit the bank.
ls1mike
$50 Site Donor 2024
So have I. I certainly don't miss sitting on the Radar during reduced visibility, high traffic, low maneuverability operations. I still wake up from dreams where I am sitting on the Radar. If the winds were as bad as they say, and the ship was going slow, it is like driving a big sail. I was know we pick up pilots on the submarine as well. I was always told that the CO maintains responsibility even if there is an incident with the Pilot on board.
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