Comments on: It's stuck

It's stuck

automatronic — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 15:54:34 -0800

A 200,000 ton container ship is jammed sideways in the Suez Canal. A crew member on the ship behind has posted the view on Instagram of the MV Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in existence, stuck firmly across the canal. An excavator can be seen trying to dig the colossal bow of the 400m ship out of the east bank. Every available tug has been scrambled to assist, but it's now been several hours and the ship remains firmly stuck. AIS tracking data shows a traffic jam is forming at both ends of the Suez canal. Unless the stricken vessel can be freed, millions of tonnes of shipping will face a 5,500 mile diversion around the entire African continent.

By: wenestvedt

wenestvedt — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 15:58:47 -0800

That dude is soooooo fired.

By: latkes

latkes — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:02:23 -0800

LOL. I love the photo of the earth mover/shovel absurdly dwarfed by the prow.

By: Beholder

Beholder — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:02:53 -0800

Ha, the name of the ship is Evergreen.

By: skippyhacker

skippyhacker — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:03:12 -0800

I guess they hadn't heard 2020 was over.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:07:48 -0800

Came for the Austin Powers references, left satisfied. Does anybody know HOW this managed to happen?

By: TrialByMedia

TrialByMedia — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:07:56 -0800

It's just been a great year to work in supply chain management. I know I don't have parts going through this canal, but I do know this is probably going to have some kind of ripple effect on my shipments out of Europe, which are already hopelessly fucked up enough as it is.

By: miguelcervantes

miguelcervantes — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:08:17 -0800

Ha, the name of the ship is Evergreen. The ship is the Ever Given, the operator is Evergreen Marine.

By: Braeburn

Braeburn — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:13:28 -0800

I need to know absolutely everything about how this happened. Reaaallly excited for this to delay already poor supply lines of it isn't fixed quickly.

By: inexorably_forward

inexorably_forward — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:14:43 -0800

I'm confused. The name on the side looks like "EVERGREEN" to me, but the AIS data calls it Ever Given?

By: inexorably_forward

inexorably_forward — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:15:08 -0800

Whoops, never mind, hadn't read the other comments!

By: Huffy Puffy

Huffy Puffy — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:18:41 -0800

Jams happen sometimes. Open the front cover and flip the lever, then simply pull out the jammed container ship. Be careful not to burn your hand.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:24:50 -0800

copy that

By: adrianhon

adrianhon — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:25:07 -0800

Have they called Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency yet?

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:29:59 -0800

Pivot!

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:30:02 -0800

Pivot!! (On preview: omg, jinx!)

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:32:36 -0800

Man, you think trying to parallel park on the street when you're out of practice is embarrassing

By: Ryvar

Ryvar — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:34:01 -0800

In which I realize that I really am never going to get that new nVidia GPU. I don't understand how my getting an RTX 3080 triggers a temporal paradox, but apparently Novikov's Self-Consistency Principle requires that I not have one, and I feel like if I keep pushing eventually the Large Hadron Collider turns the planet into a black hole to keep the timeline straight. So I'll stop. You're welcome, everyone. I'm sorry it took fucking up the Suez Canal for me to finally accept this.

By: Celsius1414

Celsius1414 — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:36:08 -0800

Just coming over to post this. What a mess!

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:36:35 -0800

it's one of the wonders of our modern civilization - it only takes one fool to fuck things up for everyone

By: allegedly

allegedly — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:39:32 -0800

I can't wait to hear Elon Musk's late-night twitter idea about how to fix this.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:42:04 -0800

Martin Brody: we're going to need a bigger canal.

By: OHenryPacey

OHenryPacey — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:43:27 -0800

Finally, a use for those 50 gallon drums of lube they sell on Amazon.

By: jocelmeow

jocelmeow — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:46:27 -0800

I suspect those 17 packs of postcards I ordered from China are in this photo.

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:46:36 -0800

We're gonna need a bigger shark.

By: scaryblackdeath

scaryblackdeath — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:48:03 -0800

That dude is soooooo fired. Turns out that ship is one size bigger than the biggest ships that are supposed to go through the canal, too. So regardless of whether this was operator error, who goofed up their transit, whatever, the person who really deserves blame is whoever looked at the size limits and said, "Screw it, send this ship anyway."

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:49:08 -0800

I thought I had a really good joke ready based on the "a man, a plan, a canal, panama" palindrome. But then I realized it was the Suez Canal, not the Panama Canal. God damn it.... edit: Just realized Suez is a palindrome to Zeus. Not sure that helps me...but I'm working on it....

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:50:19 -0800

This is the kind of nerd excitement i like to see on the internet. Feels like if we were all a big small town and all the kids are going to run down by the harbor to watch.

By: spudsilo

spudsilo — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:53:30 -0800

I have no idea how this happened, but I'm trying to imagine scenarios... apparently the Suez Canal is subject to a tidal current. Maybe nobody was minding the wheel and they started to drift?

By: m2ke

m2ke — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:54:03 -0800

It's interesting to note that if you look at the track for the Ever Given before it entered the canal, it took the time to draw... well... what looks like the average graffiti rendering of a penis. Entirely possible that it's just the bored GPS doodle of a captain waiting his turn to enter the canal, or even just random loops and some pareidolia - but it makes one wonder, doesn't it? (Go to the vesselfinder.com link and click the "Track" icon under the ship photo to see for yourself, or there are a couple of screenshots from different sources in the twitter thread.)

By: dr_dank

dr_dank — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:54:48 -0800

This is the trouble in the Suez foretold by the great prophet Joel.

By: krisjohn

krisjohn — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:55:19 -0800

If my shit from Aliexpress doesn't arrive in 90 days, as promised, I'm demanding my $5.27 back.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:56:21 -0800

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

By: Lanark

Lanark — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:57:29 -0800

The same container ship allided with Berthed Ferry "Finkenwerder" in Hamburg in 2019. Days since last accident: 0

By: Absolutely No You-Know-What

Absolutely No You-Know-What — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:57:35 -0800

I felt a great disturbance on the internet, as if millions of logistics managers suddenly cried out in sheer frustration and then fell silent. I fear something terrible has happened.

By: gwint

gwint — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:58:54 -0800

Wait, can we use this to figure out what's on the ship? And if it turns out it's 8,000 tonnes of yellow rubber duckies, perhaps they can just dynamite it like that whale in Oregon and spread joy to children across Egypt? Just spitballing, here.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:59:57 -0800

I thought I had a really good joke ready based on the "a man, a plan, a canal, panama" palindrome. But then I realized it was the Suez Canal, not the Panama Canal. God damn it.... Zeus: No on Suez.

By: mightshould

mightshould — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:00:28 -0800

Is it appropriate to say "Ship of fools" ?

By: kitten kaboodle

kitten kaboodle — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:01:43 -0800

This makes me think of the videos of the 11 foot 8 inches bridge clearance where all the trucks ignore the warnings and get peeled open or stuck.

By: rodlymight

rodlymight — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:03:30 -0800

I saw this on my TL earlier, didn't look too closely, and assumed it was another piece of sci-fi concept art.

By: macrael

macrael — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:06:23 -0800

That does look decidedly like a penis. Anyone know why the tracking data only starts there?

By: Silvery Fish

Silvery Fish — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:08:37 -0800

Turns out that ship is one size bigger than the biggest ships that are supposed to go through the canal, too. The person who posted the photo also said that she thought this was the ship that "cut them off" (however you do that at that scale) on their way into the canal. Over/under on there was alcohol involved?

By: GCU Sweet and Full of Grace

GCU Sweet and Full of Grace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:08:43 -0800

I thought I had a really good joke ready based on the "a man, a plan, a canal, panama" palindrome. But then I realized it was the Suez Canal, not the Panama Canal. God damn it.... Just switch it up to "a muez, a pluez, a canuez, suez." It'll be fiiiiiine.

By: y2karl

y2karl — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:10:44 -0800

There's a stone in the sphincter of the Red Sea.

By: joeyh

joeyh — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:11:58 -0800

Where is the MV NO FUCKS in all this?

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:17:43 -0800

What if we kissed while blocking the Suez Canal?

By: Lanark

Lanark — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:21:21 -0800

Just based on the transit fees for all the vessels that have been delayed (average $700,000 each) this has already cost around $50 million

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:23:33 -0800

Someone is getting sue-ezed over this.

By: robbyrobs

robbyrobs — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:23:55 -0800

Where Are Those Shoes You Ordered? Check the Ocean Floor More containers have fallen off ships in the past four months than are typically lost in a year. Blame heavy traffic and rolling waves.

By: Saxon Kane

Saxon Kane — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:24:17 -0800

I have no idea how this happened, but I'm trying to imagine scenarios... I think what you're trying to say is that this is one of the strangest sights you've seen in some time, and you have no idea how these people got their boats wedged into their canals, or why.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:29:27 -0800

There's got to be a lot of cameras on that thing now given the strategic importance of the canal. I mean I'm sure there are all sorts of interested parties / governments monitoring it by satellite imagery in case its not an accident but an intentional blockage etc. Which is all to say, given how many eyes are on it, someone in the crew needs to be doing their best Rose and Jack "I'm Flying" reenactment on the bow right now...or a golden opportunity has been wasted.

By: leslies

leslies — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:33:31 -0800

Am wondering - does the Suez Canal require a pilot? I believe you can't take a ship through the Panama Canal without one of their pilots steering. And what an absolutely incredible mess. That twitter thread is just amazing!

By: Fiasco da Gama

Fiasco da Gama — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:34:26 -0800

FLUSH IT

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:35:13 -0800

Ever given, never received

By: wierdo

wierdo — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:35:32 -0800

Pretty sure pilots are required for the Suez transit.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:35:40 -0800

A video from one of the ships in the queue now forming outside the canal.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:39:31 -0800

That's a ton of tonnage.

By: Hogshead

Hogshead — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:40:01 -0800

For those who don't know, shipping from the far east has been borked for a few months. The pandemic has meant that empty containers and empty ships haven't been making their way back fast enough, and the result has been prices 300-400% higher than usual--at its peak we were being quoted $11000 to ship a 40' container from China to Europe. Prices have started to come down now, a bit ($8600 was the figure that crossed my desk today) and there were sighs of relief and hopes that things would be, well, if not exactly normal then at least heading that way. And now this. I can't check the records till morning, but there is a non-zero chance that we have a container on the Evergreen.

By: sideshow

sideshow — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:41:20 -0800

I suspect those 17 packs of postcards I ordered from China are in this photo. I have a car coming from Germany that's going through the Panama Canal and then docking in San Diego (god willing) middle of April, and while tracking the ship using the same website you used, seems like every square mile of the ocean looks exactly like that. I'm not sure you can tell by looking at these maps that anything is backed up. It just always looks like that. Also, if you want so see where you late stuff from China is, just take a trip down to Huntington Beach. You can see just lines of container ships anchored in the shallow water, waiting for their slot to unload at Long Beach and San Pedro.

By: backseatpilot

backseatpilot — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:41:43 -0800

This past year has been an excellent education in all the single points of failure that can cause our society to come to a screeching halt, huh.

By: any portmanteau in a storm

any portmanteau in a storm — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:45:43 -0800

all the single points of failure I don't know what's more unsettling, that there are so many single points of failure out there or that there are likely many more that I'm just not aware of.

By: Seaweed Shark

Seaweed Shark — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:45:59 -0800

"There is no such thing as a ship that's too large, only a canal that's too small"

By: jamjam

jamjam — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:47:24 -0800

The pandemic has meant that empty containers and empty ships haven't been making their way back fast enough, and the result has been prices 300-400% higher than usual--at its peak we were being quoted $11000 to ship a 40' container from China to Europe. Prices have started to come down now, a bit ($8600 was the figure that crossed my desk today) and there were sighs of relief and hopes that things would be, well, if not exactly normal then at least heading that way. And now this There wouldn't happen to be a futures market in shipping fees would there, Hogshead?

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:49:05 -0800

if you look at the track for the Ever Given before it entered the canal, it took the time to draw... well... what looks like the average graffiti rendering of a penis I thought it was maybe a coincidence, but on inspection: that's a penis (.gif) I have no idea how this happened, but I'm trying to imagine scenarios... I'd like to think that it started with the pilot saying, "If you two don't shut up, so help me, I am going to turn this thing around!"

By: rdr

rdr — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:49:54 -0800

There are tidal effects but the canal isn't moving, they had a pilot, and they didn't just brush against the canal walls. They managed to apply enough power that they got stuck. How likely is it that this wasn't intentional?

By: nickggully

nickggully — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:52:39 -0800

There once was a ship that put to sea The name of the ship was the Ever Given The winds blew up, her bow dipped mud O dig, my digger boys, dig (Huh!) [Chorus] Soon may the Backhoe come To bring us fathoms and sea and room One day, when the tonguin' is done We'll take our containers and go

By: sourcequench

sourcequench — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:02:35 -0800

Came to the thread for the Wellerman filk; left satisfied.

By: sideshow

sideshow — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:02:48 -0800

There wouldn't happen to be a futures market in shipping fees would there, Hogshead? Sure are. Definitely not for the diamond hands crowd, however.

By: traveler_

traveler_ — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:03:26 -0800

I don't know what's more unsettling, that there are so many single points of failure out there or that there are likely many more that I'm just not aware of. The ocean floor through the Suez Canal is a route for a great many undersea data cables, especially some of the more important ones linking EMEA with APAC. From time to time a ship will drag its anchor in the wrong spot and cause no end of trouble.

By: Ray Walston, Luck Dragon

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:15:07 -0800

This is the trouble in the Suez foretold by the great prophet Joel. Thought this was "trouble in the sewers" Now I don't know what to think

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:18:41 -0800

Is there a parallel term to schadenfreude where, rather than feeling good because someone else is feeling bad, you're experiencing a sort of sympathetic, gleeful fatalism upon observing the entropy of the universe? Or is the word for that just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ?

By: automatronic

automatronic — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:20:49 -0800

I read a lot of marine accident reports. I will be eagerly awaiting this one. My wild guess would be some failure in the hydraulics driving the rudders, or the systems controlling them. If the rudder went hard over unintentionally this outcome would happen very quickly in a narrow space like that, even at low speed. 200,000 tons has a shitload of momentum, even if you could stop the engine or put it astern immediately - which you can't on a big ship like that. Big machinery takes time to change speeds. The crankshaft alone probably weighs 200-300 tons. The cylinders are the height of a building.

By: taquito sunrise

taquito sunrise — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:23:37 -0800

Man, you think trying to parallel park on the street when you're out of practice is embarrassing one time I slid while taking a right turn & my small car got stuck on a pile of snow that had built up between the incoming right turn lane & the incoming straight lanes, like stuck on top, all four tires dangling uselessly in the air, obstructing traffic, until a trio of burly saviors physically lifted it off & set it back on the road this canal thing makes me feel way better about that in comparison

By: TrialByMedia

TrialByMedia — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:25:26 -0800

This past year has been an excellent education in all the single points of failure that can cause our society to come to a screeching halt, huh. Have you heard about the global steel shortage? That's another thing that's making this year especially fun.

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:30:47 -0800

As a fan of the Duluth Harbor Cam, this is all very unsurprising because after navigating vast bodies of water, certain things come down to a matter of mere feet, but the knock-on effect of this ship being wedged in the Suez of all places is massive -- and the scale of the ship in question larger than the lakers that ply the Port of Duluth -- but in any case, enjoy some grounding porn from said locale (no injuries or anything traumatic, just big uh-ohs): Presque Isle hits pier in Duluth American Spirit Grounding 06/17/2018 Paul R. Tregurtha Aground in Duluth, Sept. 20, 2014

By: medusa

medusa — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:34:15 -0800

like stuck on top, all four tires dangling uselessly in the air You high centered. I've also high centered, during an ill-advised attempt to drive on a 4-wheel-drive road that my vehicle was not suitable to drive on. It made me feel like an upside-down turtle. I'm with you on the feeling better about that now. My driving error wasn't dissected in a metafilter thread!

By: Don.Kinsayder

Don.Kinsayder — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:50:01 -0800

There's something about this that touches upon the sublime. I'm kinda giddy and filled with a weird dread contemplating this supermassive ship slowly but inexorably getting stuck. I think my teeth are sweating.

By: neon909

neon909 — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:52:14 -0800

*chef's kiss*

By: Don.Kinsayder

Don.Kinsayder — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:52:20 -0800

Also, logistics nightmares are surprisingly captivating!

By: Mr.Encyclopedia

Mr.Encyclopedia — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:53:09 -0800

Surely if this were intentional there's better ways of blocking the suez, like intentionally scuttling your ship right in the middle, or ramming into the ship to the front/rear of you. This is almost surely the result of an extremely ill-timed hydraulic failure.

By: ob1quixote

ob1quixote — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:54:30 -0800

wierdo: “Pretty sure pilots are required for the Suez transit.”

According to this Chief Makoi vlog on the transit, yes. "Our Ship Transits the Suez Canal | Seaman VLOG 037"—Chief MAKOi, 18 November 2017

By: showbiz_liz

showbiz_liz — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:03:41 -0800

My friend, hoping to find photos of tugboats working on freeing the ship, image-searched "ever given tugs." She did not receive images of tugboats.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:12:16 -0800

Presque Isle hits pier in Duluth The marks on the side of that ship suggests that wasn't the first such incident.

By: etherist

etherist — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:33:37 -0800

Could be worse. What if the front of the ship fell off because the whole thing was made from cardboard? It's happened before! Clarke and Dawe - The Front Fell Off

By: tavella

tavella — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:34:50 -0800

It does not appear that it was too big for the Suez, counter the comment above. Suezmax is actually quite large: "Currently the permissible limits for suezmax ships are 20.1 m (66 ft) of draught with the beam no wider than 50 m (164.0 ft), or 12.2 m (40 ft) of draught with maximum allowed beam of 77.5 m (254 ft)", and while the Ever Given is pretty big, the it would fit in the second category. If it was overloaded the draft might be wrong, but it's not inherently too large. Which makes sense, since Evergreen isn't exactly a newcomer and is unlikely to be sending ships that were going to get stuck and cost them money.

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:37:31 -0800

Clarke and Dawe - The Front Fell Off Hah. Holy shit, I totally forgot about that! But fun fact about the Presque Isle -- the front can theoretically fall off because it's a tug-and-barge combo. The tug is at the back, and the front is just a barge that it pushes. Pictures of the detached tug portion here. It would have been sort of amusing if they'd just detached the tug portion, left the barge there, and fucked off onto Lake Superior after botching their departure from the harbour.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:46:12 -0800

Checked Twitter for any news about this. It appears that the remaining Q folks are wedging this occurrence into the conspiracy, which is a kind of news, I guess.

By: theory

theory — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:46:50 -0800

There are long sections of the Suez that have two separate lanes, where a blockage like this perhaps wouldn't cause such a big headache. This is not one of those sections.

By: ricochet biscuit

ricochet biscuit — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:48:54 -0800

I thought I had a really good joke ready based on the "a man, a plan, a canal, panama" palindrome. But then I realized it was the Suez Canal, not the Panama Canal. God damn it.... Reaaallly excited for this to delay already poor supply lines of it isn't fixed quickly. Over/under on there was alcohol involved? I don't know if there might be vaccines among the cargo but: Ever Given Stuck In Suez Canal = Vaccines, Revenues, Gin: A Klutz

By: Slackermagee

Slackermagee — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:54:34 -0800

So this is terrible and prices are going to be bananas tomorrow, right?

By: automatronic

automatronic — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 19:55:48 -0800

Came for the Austin Powers references, left satisfied. And for the Brits amongst us, shades of the Chuckle Brothers: to me, to you.

By: ckape

ckape — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:13:15 -0800

I'm just impressed that there's enough information for that tracker to properly depict the ship diagonally blocking the canal.

By: freethefeet

freethefeet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:23:32 -0800

Countess Elena- "wedging" groan... But I briefly saw that the recent discovery of more dead sea scrolls nearby as 'significant' and linked. (Those are definitely scare quotes.)

By: They sucked his brains out!

They sucked his brains out! — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:32:49 -0800

MS EVERGREEN moar like MERGES NEVER amirite

By: They sucked his brains out!

They sucked his brains out! — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:33:08 -0800

Oh wait, never mind.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:37:13 -0800

Soundtrack for the thread

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:47:54 -0800

The marks on the side of that ship suggests that wasn't the first such incident. Pilot training course and final exam

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:55:20 -0800

Metafilter: I read a lot of marine accident reports.

By: oulipian

oulipian — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:04:38 -0800

Where Are Those Shoes You Ordered? Check the Ocean Floor Ah yes, Davy Jones' Foot Locker

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:05:18 -0800

Soundtrack for the thread That works. But I was going to go with Men Without Hats... "Sideways."

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:07:47 -0800

Ah yes, Davy Jones' Foot Locker Full fathom five, my footwear lies Of its soles are coral made

By: ctmf

ctmf — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:10:24 -0800

How does the same thing not happen to everyone else in the channel now, in slow motion? Anchor? You usually need motion to steer and wind on such a big ship is a thing.

By: turbid dahlia

turbid dahlia — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:17:02 -0800

Sounds like a golden opportunity for me to finally open up my competing canal.

By: Fiasco da Gama

Fiasco da Gama — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:17:37 -0800

'She's sideways', the captain said, shrugging 'wedged in with containers we're lugging, but we all understand that relief is at hand we'll get off with some vigorous tugging'

By: cali

cali — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:20:22 -0800

"The vessel suffered a blackout while transiting in a northerly direction" So basically it stalled out and drifted, what a nightmare

By: anshuman

anshuman — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:23:56 -0800

Suez tide chart

By: anshuman

anshuman — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:28:47 -0800

Noting that another ship in the jam also lost power (and almost rammed another ship).

By: poe

poe — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:46:38 -0800

That ship has a carrying capacity of 20,124 TEU or about 965,952,000 bananas.

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:50:50 -0800

The small McGees and I thank you all for this thread because we are OBSESSED with this poor ship and they are equally entertained by the factual logistics nerdery and the jokes.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:53:50 -0800

another ship in the jam also lost power (and almost rammed another ship) I'm not saying it's aliens

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:53:59 -0800

Pilot training course and final exam It's not often I find myself shouting with useless rage at an online video. Or in this case two videos.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:56:29 -0800

Sideways Keep 'em coming... Stranded

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:59:43 -0800

Sounds like a golden opportunity for me to finally open up my competing canal Hey! Unsavoury euphemisms belong over here.

By: cendawanita

cendawanita — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:16:36 -0800

I need to find more channels/accounts/podcasts on logistical nightmares because it turns out this is my jam rather than true crime.

By: cats are weird

cats are weird — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:18:51 -0800

Waiting for the Well There's Your Problem podcast on this one, I have a feeling it'll be good!

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:21:16 -0800

this is my jam iswydt

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:24:02 -0800

tugs to the left of me, barges to the right

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:32:25 -0800

ITYM the original Stuck In The Suez With You (featuring the most-fun-to-play bassline ever)

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:32:53 -0800

So basically it stalled out and drifted, what a nightmare Fast and Furious 22: Suez Drift

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:35:36 -0800

From The Guardian: Early reports speculated the vessel suffered a loss of power, but the ship's operator, Evergreen Marine Corp, told Agence-France Presse: "The container accidentally ran aground after a suspected gust of wind hit it. THAT SHIP WEIGHS A BAJILLION TONNES HOW STRONG COULD THAT WIND HAVE BEEN???

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 22:38:31 -0800

Well but look at the sheer sides of that thing, it's like one ginormous sail.

By: theory

theory — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 23:10:02 -0800

More soundtrack material: "All Sideways"

By: cendawanita

cendawanita — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 23:29:51 -0800

Apparently: https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1374597391463120896?s=19 OUF: new pics suggest the #EVERGIVEN might have impaled the canal shore with its bulbous bow. Wild if true. Bulbous bows look weird but modify how water flows around the bow, making ships more efficient. Cant find credits on pics 1&2, 3 is shipbuilder Samusung Heavy Industries. https://t.co/9c5CLgw3aa

By: L.P. Hatecraft

L.P. Hatecraft — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 23:38:28 -0800

Over/under on there was alcohol involved?

Everclear?

By: anshuman

anshuman — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 23:40:19 -0800

My current earworm.

By: RichardP

RichardP — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:07:04 -0800

Everclear? You joke, but Evergreen has named one of their "Ever C-class" container ships the Ever Clear (also here). Fortunately it is far away from important shipping canals.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:12:53 -0800

Bulbous Bow

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:14:43 -0800

Homemade Traditional Electric Jam

By: are-coral-made

are-coral-made — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:25:05 -0800

thanks to the recent maritime law thread we've all brushed up on our international code of signals > D Keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty. > F I am disabled; communicate with me. > G I require a pilot. > M My vessel is stopped and making no way through the water. > V I require assistance. > Z I require a tug.

By: wachhundfisch

wachhundfisch — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:59:23 -0800

> The same container ship allided with Berthed Ferry "Finkenwerder" in Hamburg in 2019. Woah. There is actually video of that accident.

By: unearthed

unearthed — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 01:12:31 -0800

TrialByMedia "It's just been a great year to ~~work in~~ [understand how] supply chain management" works, how fragile it is, and some of the ways in which it could be disrupted.

By: jontyjago

jontyjago — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 01:16:36 -0800

In addition to his transit videos, Chief Makoi recently did a breakdown of the costs of a Suez transit versus going the long way round. Long story short for the bulk carrier in his example, it's around $370,000 cheaper and 3-4 weeks quicker to cut through the canal.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 01:56:22 -0800

By: chavenet

chavenet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 02:16:06 -0800

Everyone needs a tug.

By: Major Clanger

Major Clanger — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 02:29:15 -0800

Re the comments upthread about the EVER GIVEN's track, here is a plot. Two butt-cheeks and a cock-and-balls. I am now awaiting Chuck Tingle's next masterpiece, Pounded in the Butt by an Ultra Large Container Ship.

By: Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol

Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 02:35:46 -0800

my small car got stuck on a pile of snow that had built up between the incoming right turn lane & the incoming straight lanes, like stuck on top, all four tires dangling uselessly in the air, obstructing traffic, until a trio of burly saviors physically lifted it off & set it back on the road

Please say that these saviors moved your car because of your fresh breath.

By: straight

straight — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 02:47:14 -0800

I believe the bulbous bow is usually located directly underneath the Wave Motion Gun

By: acb

acb — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 02:51:23 -0800

Has anyone yet claimed that Russian hackers did this to promote container shipping over the Trans-Siberian Railway as a safer alternative?

By: Sauce Trough

Sauce Trough — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 02:59:47 -0800

> D Keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty. > F I am disabled; communicate with me. > G I require a pilot. > M My vessel is stopped and making no way through the water. > V I require assistance. > Z I require a tug.

who knew the ICS was so emo?

By: acb

acb — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 03:35:45 -0800

Perhaps the main learning to take home from this is that the sides of canals should be lined with giant pinball-style bumpers that push any drifting ships back into the canal.

By: Teegeeack AV Club Secretary

Teegeeack AV Club Secretary — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 03:46:18 -0800

The video of the canal blockage & ship queues linked earlier is deleted now. Similar / same footage is available from the Guardian.

By: thejoshu

thejoshu — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:10:56 -0800

If you french fry when you should've pizza'd, you're gonna have a bad time.

By: schoolgirl report

schoolgirl report — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:23:26 -0800

During my college years there was a local band called Kittywinder who released a song called "Narrow Canal" that went "Narrow canal! Narrow canal! Your boat's too big for my narrow canal!" It was, course, not actually about a canal. But man if I could only find a recording online it would be a perfect addition here.

By: condour75

condour75 — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:25:44 -0800

Usually a shipment of prunes, followed by a shipment of coffee, fixes this for me.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:29:55 -0800

Seems like it didn't even need the rudder over much, or perhaps even at all, to make this happen. Just the power going out. In a complete power blackout, you'd lose the source of hydraulic pressure needed to move the rudder. There'll be some residual pressure left in the system which you can keep steering with briefly, but unless you can get the power back, that pressure will run out. I've been in this situation, on a much smaller vessel. The helmsman will be catching a lot of flack here, but may have been doing a heroic job trying to keep it straight with gradual loss of control force. Without power, you can't use the bow thrusters to help. And even if you can manage to leave the rudder dead centre, sooner or later the ship will veer off course one way or another. And once that happened, momentum will have carried that bulbuous bow right into the bank, where it dug in and formed a pivot point as the ship's mass continued forward, swinging the stern across to the other side of the canal and carrying it aground there too. It's going to be very hard to free it, because although you can attach a lot of engine power with tugs, you're trying to get the ship moving from a standing start with engine power alone while trying to overcome a lot of friction. Whereas to get into that position, it had the help of 200,000 tons of mass which was already up to speed. The big question is going to be how that power blackout, if that's what it was, was able to happen. There'll be multiple generators aboard as well as the main engine - you'd think something should have been able to supply power to keep the ship controllable.

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:39:29 -0800

The hilarious complication is that in order to pull on the ship with a tugboat, the tug engines will have to apply thrust away from the ship, which will drive water towards the ship which will somewhat counter the effect of the tug. A little like the cartoons where a becalmed sailboat is "rescued" by someone on-board pulling out a desk fan to blow on the sail: it's funny, because physics doesn't work that way. The farther away the tugs are from the ship, the less the effect will be, for sure. I would guess they'll eventually free it by waiting for the tide to flow astern, then yoink sideways on the stern with as much as they've got in an effort to derotate the ship with the bow as the hinge. So using an excavator on the stern side to make that easier would be best. The bow isn't going anywhere.

By: acb

acb — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:57:22 -0800

It was, course, not actually about a canal. posted by schoolgirl report at 12:23 Eponysterical.

By: Lanark

Lanark — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:02:34 -0800

I was wondering if they could air lift some of the containers off to lower the weight, a Chinook can (just) lift one filled container. However the Ever Given holds 20,000 containers, so even lifting 10% of them (2000) at a rate of 1 per hour would take 83 days!

By: purple_frogs

purple_frogs — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:12:38 -0800

I was wondering if they could air lift some of the containers off to lower the weight Air lift?!? I was imagining they'd end up just throwing them into the water. Though even how they'd do that is a big technical challenge. Maybe they could jack up one side of the ship and the containers would fall off?

By: jontyjago

jontyjago — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:14:35 -0800

However the Ever Given holds 20,000 containers In the interest of complete container nerdery, whilst the capacity of the ship is listed as 20,388 TEU this will probably not translate to around 20,000 actual containers. TEU stands for Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit and a lot (majority?) of containers carried these days are 40 feet long and are classed as 2 TEU each. Still, that's a lot of big boxes.

By: Lanark

Lanark — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:20:29 -0800

Ah a 40 ft container is over the carrying capacity of a Chinook, so that idea is out.

By: Don.Kinsayder

Don.Kinsayder — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:27:54 -0800

I feel that Boaty McBoatface is somehow behind all of this.

By: nubs

nubs — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:29:19 -0800

While "We Didn't Start the Fire" is the obvious Billy Joel reference, my mind is hung up on "Downeaster Alexa" if only because the line "Tell my wife I am trolling Atlantis" becomes "Tell my wife I am blocking the Suez" very nicely.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:35:15 -0800

A crane ship could transfer containers to other ships. Considering the costs involved they could even just send a swarm of stevedores and welders onto the ship to manually empty and cut up containers. But that would seem like a last resort. The solution will probably be excavation/dredging.

By: glonous keming

glonous keming — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:37:31 -0800

Apologies if this pic has already been linked but I liked it: Front-end loader for scale.

By: purple_frogs

purple_frogs — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:45:08 -0800

A question that's always bugged me when seeing ships with containers piled that densely and that many units high: what happens if the crew needs to get to one of the boxes on top, or in the middle, during the trip? I mean if they find out it's carrying dangerous materials, or people, or something? Does it really never happen?

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:54:42 -0800

Partly floated

By: condour75

condour75 — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 05:54:48 -0800

Inevitably, the juice boxes are somewhere in the middle of the stack

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:05:07 -0800

Or not.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:08:08 -0800

Satellite view.

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:16:28 -0800

That ship has a carrying capacity of 20,124 TEU or about 965,952,000 bananas. At an approx. 4 bananas per pound, that works out to 241,488,000 pounds of bananas. I miss Harry Chapin.

By: Mayor West

Mayor West — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:28:25 -0800

From The Guardian: Early reports speculated the vessel suffered a loss of power, but the ship's operator, Evergreen Marine Corp, told Agence-France Presse: "The container accidentally ran aground after a suspected gust of wind hit it. THAT SHIP WEIGHS A BAJILLION TONNES HOW STRONG COULD THAT WIND HAVE BEEN???

Back-of-the-envelope math: 400m long ship, air draft (how far it sticks out of the water, basically) 12m = 4800 m² Let's assume the wind was really strong. Like, hurricane-force wind. 80 MPH, or 35 m/s.

F_w   = p_d A
     = 1/2 ρ v² A 
     = 1/2 (1.2) * (35²) * 4800
     = 3,528,000 N

3.5 million newtons is a lot of force! But the ship, loaded with cargo, weighs somewhere in the ballpark of 450,000,000 kilograms, so let's divide our force by weight:

3528000 / 450000000 = .00784

Hmm. A change in velocity of .008 m/s probably wouldn't blow us aground. Wonder how strong the wind would have to be to actually nudge the ship? Like, to exert pressure to change its velocity by 1 m/s? The force from wind is quadratic to its speed, so it can't be THAT big, right?

F_w        = p_d A
450000000 = p_d A
450000000 = 1/2 ρ v² A
450000000 = 1/2 (1.2) * (v²) * 4800
156250    = v²
395.28    = v

395.28 m/s, or 884 MPH. The fastest wind ever recorded in a hurricane is 190MPH, so yeah, it's totally plausible that the ship was overcome by an errant gust of wind 5 times that strong as it made its way across the Suez Canal, blowing it off-course and aground.

By: nestor_makhno

nestor_makhno — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:32:08 -0800

Maybe they could jack up one side of the ship and the containers would fall off? Thereby blocking the canal even more. I mean if they find out it's carrying dangerous materials, or people, or something? Does it really never happen? Sometimes crew members have to go on the stacks to reconnect containers that have come loose. I have never heard of a crew opening a container at see because of what you just described.

By: moonmilk

moonmilk — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:43:18 -0800

Mayor West - I didn't check your actual numbers, but your final value 0.008 is an acceleration, not a speed. 0.008 meters per second squared would mean that it would take only about 125 seconds to build up to a 1 m/s change in velocity. *it's been a long time since physics class, I may have got this wrong!

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:45:04 -0800

400m long ship, air draft (how far it sticks out of the water, basically) 12m = 4800 m2 12m can't be right. A container is more than 2m high and they are stacked at least 9 high on the deck.

By: jontyjago

jontyjago — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:45:23 -0800

what happens if the crew needs to get to one of the boxes on top, or in the middle, during the trip? Based purely on watching container ship crew Youtubers, I would say that the simple answer, in most cases, is that they can't, for the reason that in the normal mode of operation they have absolutely no reason to. The exception to this is reefers, which are refrigerated containers hooked into the ship's power and their vital statistics are checked on a regular basis to make sure the temperature is at the right level. So they need to be accessible but for the rest, they only need to be secured and transported.

By: Lanark

Lanark — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:48:03 -0800

The draft is the distance from the keel to the waterline, the 'below water' part.

By: jquinby

jquinby — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 06:52:37 -0800

A wedged ship in a great tightness. Oh bother.

By: medusa

medusa — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:00:11 -0800

> F I am disabled; communicate with me. If I had to pick one signal flag message to express my soul over the last year, it would be this one.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:02:37 -0800

> Zeus: No on Suez. Zeus: No kayak on Suez.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:07:03 -0800

Zeus: no Tao boat on Suez. (See here heehee.)

By: epo

epo — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:08:47 -0800

Surely the real problem is inertia. Once that boat starts moving it will just keep on going, equally it takes a lot of effort to get it moving in a new direction. I've heard at least 2 excuses, a blackout (interestingly that word also appears in the German video above) and high winds. It is on a nice straight stretch now but the rotation could have started half an hour previously. Right now everyone is trying to avoid blame and justify an insurance claim.

By: theodolite

theodolite — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:09:16 -0800

Suez, amaze us!

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:11:12 -0800

And you may ask yourself, "Am I right? Am I wrong?" And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?" ♪♬ Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down...

By: rdr

rdr — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:13:35 -0800

The Suez Canal Authority is saying that the grounding was caused by wind. "The accident is mainly due to the lack of visibility resulting from bad weather conditions as the country passes through a dust storm, with wind speed reaching 40 knots," Suez Canal Authority Chairman Osama Rabie said in a statement. If that's true, then the canal authorities need to do some engineering to make the passage safer. Lack of visibility should never be a problem on a canal. The canal is fixed. Radar can be set up on the shore and then the information needs to be relayed to the ships. Is there something like a non-ship AIS beacon?

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:19:46 -0800

Zeus K. cuts Tao boat stuck on Suez.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:22:34 -0800

Oops. Never mind. Work in progress.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:24:24 -0800

Zeus (no K) cuts Tao boat stuck on Suez.

By: Jane the Brown

Jane the Brown — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:27:41 -0800

What happens if the crew needs to get to one of the boxes on top, or in the middle, during the trip? The whole purpose of containers is to reduce the number of cargo handlers necessary to handle cargo and thereby avoid the salary and wages of enormous numbers of unionized stevedores. One way they justified this, apart from the very compelling argument that it would save costs and result in lower prices, is by justifying containers as a defense against shrinkage. You're not supposed to be able to get into a container by any reasonable means and if you can something is very wrong with the system. Among other things, if you could get into containers that would completely invalidate the insurance on them.

By: theodolite

theodolite — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:29:39 -0800

I just realized that EVA Air has the same logo, font, and ownership as this ship. Now I'm thinking about what it would be like to get wedged sideways between two clouds.

By: clockwork

clockwork — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 07:44:52 -0800

My only hope is that sea shanty tik tok steps up to document this farce.

By: Sheydem-tants

Sheydem-tants — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:11:25 -0800

Please enjoy Big Steamers , a 100+ year old poem of Rudyard Kipling's, set to music by British folk singer-songwriter Peter Bellamy. Relevant last verse:

For the bread that you eat and the biscuits you nibble, The sweets that you suck and the joints that you carve, They are brought to you daily by All Us Big Steamers And if any one hinders our coming you'll starve!

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:22:46 -0800

Idly browsing the names of ships on Vessel Finder - there are a lot of great new Metafilter usernames in there. Stolt Maple. Happy Avocet. Frontier Lodestar. Energy Chancellor. Grand Dolphin. Siem Socrates. I'm a big fan of Draftvader. And then there is poor little Chris. He's currently stuck just off Suez between Glory, New Discovery, and can see ITHAKI WARRIOR lording it up in the distance. Imagine being 239 meters long, and weighing over 56000 tons, and all your shipyard can think of to call you is Chris. No last name. No cool random numbers and letters like that fucker BARI12743. Just Chris.

By: interogative mood

interogative mood — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:23:41 -0800

Looks like they are getting it out https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/24/huge-container-ship-blocks-suez-canal-evergreen?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:26:40 -0800

As of half hour ago: Latest update regarding the re-floating of MV EVER GIVEN: two dredgers are expected to commence their efforts tonight around 2000 (GMT +2). As per 1650 (GMT+2) vessel is still blocking the #SuezCanal and traffic is suspended.

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:29:38 -0800

Looks like next high tide for the canal is in a few hours

By: rodlymight

rodlymight — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:30:53 -0800

Going to start saying "ever givin" in place of "ever lovin", which is to say in place of "motherfuckin"

By: automatronic

automatronic — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:51:59 -0800

Containers are sealed shut in transit, with tamper-evident locking mechanisms. Here's an article about them. They would never be opened by the crew. If a container showed sign of having been opened there would be a lot of unpleasant paperwork to be done. It's a big part of the concept of containerization. The container is the unit of transport. It goes from source to destination as a unit and isn't messed with along the way, unless customs authorities decide to inspect it. If they did they would reseal it and there would be paperwork.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 08:52:31 -0800

And then there is poor little Chris. He's currently stuck just off Suez between Glory, New Discovery, and can see ITHAKI WARRIOR lording it up in the distance. Imagine being 239 meters long, and weighing over 56000 tons, and all your shipyard can think of to call you is Chris. No last name. No cool random numbers and letters like that fucker BARI12743. Just Chris. And to think that the ship's original name was STAVANGER VIKING and then CABO TAMAR*. Its current owners seem to have suffered from a remarkable failure of imagination. * Although that one is a rather inauspicious name for an oil tanker.

By: Cris E

Cris E — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:08:34 -0800

Well that's one way to celebrate Exxon Valdez Day...

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:09:08 -0800

Containers are sealed shut in transit ... They would never be opened by the crew. Hope to God there aren't any stowaways on this one. There have been migrants who hide in containers, presumably after paying huge bribes, but the results are so bad that I would take my chance with the wheel well of a plane first.

By: JoeZydeco

JoeZydeco — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:12:57 -0800

I read a lot of marine accident reports. I will be eagerly awaiting this one. I used to have fun browsing the gallery on cargolaw.com, but that site hasn't been updated in almost a decade. Would you have any other publicly-available sources?

By: mstokes650

mstokes650 — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:16:40 -0800

No cool random numbers and letters like that fucker BARI12743 It only seems so because you don't know about the tragic fates that befell BARI1 through BARI12742. "Cargo shipping is a complicated profession."

By: automatronic

automatronic — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:34:56 -0800

I used to have fun browsing the gallery on cargolaw.com, but that site hasn't been updated in almost a decade. Would you have any other publicly-available sources? I'm UK-based so my usual interest is in our Marine Accident Investigation Branch reports - 974 of them to read there covering the last 20 years or so, should keep you busy a while. Most will have pictures. The US equivalent are the NTSB Marine Accident Reports. Other countries have similar processes.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 09:40:33 -0800

Please enjoy Big Steamers Let's eliminate unsavoury euphemisms altogether.

By: acb

acb — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:09:15 -0800

My first thought was bao buns, which are the opposite of unsavoury.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:16:09 -0800

IDK, I think Chris sounds friendly, approachable, and can do. Want to get your container across the globe? Call Chris, she'll get it done.

By: nickggully

nickggully — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:22:15 -0800

Who let Moses drive?

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:23:37 -0800

I like bao buns and I cannot lie.

By: Snowishberlin

Snowishberlin — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:24:16 -0800

which are the opposite of unsavoury Wait, I just made that pun to my friends about the guy in the shrimp thread, and how unsavory he seems to be. Coconut shrimp aside.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:29:07 -0800

Call Chris, she'll get it done. Well except for the moment she won't, as she's currently doing zero knots and chit chatting with that other lay-about tanker the Corcovado LNG just off to her starboard. I mean seriously, is this Port Taofik, or some sort of tea party for tankers.

By: parmanparman

parmanparman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:30:21 -0800

This is why we can't have nice things.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:45:13 -0800

This is why we can't have nice things. Or at least inexpensive, short-lived replicas of nice things.

By: elkevelvet

elkevelvet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:53:46 -0800

We needed a man, a plan, ...

By: dlugoczaj

dlugoczaj — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:30:43 -0800

Zeus: No on Suez. Or conversely: Zeus says YAS SUEZ

By: aeshnid

aeshnid — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:38:44 -0800

Time to break out the Economy Size packet of Colon Blow...

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:46:59 -0800

Snap quiz - MeFi user name or Cargo Ship/Tanker. Max Stability or Max Power

Click for answer

The Max Stability is a General Cargo Ship built in 2006. Max Power is a Mefi username.

Meta 4 or Meta283

Click for answer

The Meta 4 is an Oil Products Tanker built in 2010. Meta283 is a Mefi username.

Nayano or Naya

Click for answer

The Naya is a Container Ship built in 1997. Nayano is a Mefi username.

Stellaluna or Stella Laura

Click for answer

The Stella Laura is a Bulk Carrier built in 2010. Stellaluna is a Mefi username.

Valancy Rachel or Rachel Borchard

Click for answer

The Rachel Borchard is a Container Ship built in 2007. Valancy Rachel is a Mefi username.

Luna Spirit or Lunaport

Click for answer

The Luna Spirit is a Vehicles Carrier built in 2007. Lunaport is a Mefi username.

Panamana or Panamaus

Click for answer

The Panamana is a General Cargo Ship built in 2010. Panamaus is a Mefi username.

By: The otter lady

The otter lady — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:47:52 -0800

Tea Party For Tankers is my Cat Stevens cover album

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:51:40 -0800

What sorcery is this

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:55:09 -0800

This sorcery.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 11:58:00 -0800

Perhaps the main learning to take home from this is that the sides of canals should be lined with giant pinball-style bumpers that push any drifting ships back into the canal. Do not, I repeat, do not, under any circumstance, connect these bumpers to a score display at the ends of the canal.

By: medusa

medusa — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:10:25 -0800

Snap quiz - MeFi user name or Cargo Ship/Tanker. This is awesome! I LOLd. And got about 50% correct. You have the makings of a ~~massive~~extremely local clickbait sensation on your hands.

By: wenestvedt

wenestvedt — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:21:30 -0800

Also, from this thread:

Cris E. or Chris

Cris E. is a history-minded mefi user, but Chris is a friendly, can-do ship

By: scruss

scruss — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:49:00 -0800

→ The crankshaft alone probably weighs 200-300 tons. The cylinders are the height of a building. Just in case folks weren't up on the size of the truly colossal two-stroke diesels that are in these ships, here's a promo video for the 14RT-flex96C. It can put out more than 6 MW per cylinder.

By: They sucked his brains out!

They sucked his brains out! — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:50:01 -0800

Snap quiz - MeFi user name or Cargo Ship/Tanker.

This is why we can have nice things

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 12:51:31 -0800

To follow up, Q's specific line of bullshit about this. More seriously, if this is indeed due to a sandstorm, could it be another knock-on effect of global warming and possibly bound to happen again? I know there are generally strong sandstorms in the area, but there's also snow sometimes in the South, and look at this winter.

By: Multicellular Exothermic

Multicellular Exothermic — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:08:44 -0800

So, if the cargo ship collides with the walls of the canal, doesn't the collision poke holes in the hull, and make the ship sink, all Titanic-style?

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:11:12 -0800

I know this is just for scale, but I can't help imagining someone navigating the Suez Canal so poorly that their container ship ended up square in the middle of the Central Park reservoir. Just Chris.... And to think that the ship's original name was STAVANGER VIKING and then CABO TAMAR* Let he who did not have a regrettable username as a teenager throw the first stone. I don't know. I think Chris is kind of personable. Intimate, even. It's a container ship you can confide in. One that you can introduce to your mom. STAVANGER VIKING is fine for a fling, but I'm not bringing them home for Christmas.

By: hydra77

hydra77 — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:22:57 -0800

3 -2 -1 - PUSH! The tugs are lined up (nytimes video).

By: zerobyproxy

zerobyproxy — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:27:18 -0800

Oh the Suez they say Is but one way The aisle is too narrow for passin' Later that night When they were in clear sight Came the wedge of the Ever Given freight hauler /I just need 20 more verses

By: any portmanteau in a storm

any portmanteau in a storm — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:33:10 -0800

STAVANGER VIKING Viking Stavanger is the name of a Norwegian soccer team*, so maybe the person who named it was a fan, or just into semi-obscure teams. * I assumed I knew this because they are in European competitions a fair bit, but looking at Wikipedia it seems they usually don't make it out of qualifying matches into the tournaments proper. It also tells me they were once managed by Roy Hodgson so maybe the team came up when discussing his interesting CV.

By: liet

liet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 14:17:01 -0800

I'm expecting a Kickstarter item and the inventor let us know the shipment was coming from China on a container ship called the Everladen. I thought it was a cool name for a container ship (or maybe an elf) and now I'm disappointed it's just a naming convention.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 14:27:16 -0800

I want to be a tugboat.

By: miguelcervantes

miguelcervantes — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 14:33:49 -0800

A Poem by Twitter user @krfabian my name is Boat and wen im tired (but shipping werk is still required) then all I want is lyttle snooze i turn to side i blok the Sooz

By: axiom

axiom — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 15:15:09 -0800

The ocean floor through the Suez Canal is a route for a great many undersea data cables, especially some of the more important ones linking EMEA with APAC. From time to time a ship will drag its anchor in the wrong spot and cause no end of trouble. This is a bit inaccurate. Check Submarine Cable Map and you'll see that all the lines studiously avoid the canal, typically going overland through points near Port Said and Alexandria south to Suez and points to its southwest, then resuming undersea-ness from there. Neal Stephenson talks about the process of sending cable overland in his Wired article from 1996 (admittedly things have probably changed somewhat since then, but the basic principle that putting cable into a canal is a colossally bad idea hasn't changed). Ships can still mess up undersea cable, of course, they just have to do it by dragging anchor in spots where there actually is some cabling. The canal is not such a spot.

By: Jesse the K

Jesse the K — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 15:34:18 -0800

Here's an 8-episode podcast all about shipping containers: https://pod.link/1209559177 In eight 50-minute episodes, the CONTAINERS Alexis Madrigal explores how global transport changed from humans putting individual things in ships and airplanes to putting things into train-car size containers, which are loaded via huge cranes onto huge boats. Containerization is why cheaply-made goods have flooded the world. The series examines how this change, started almost by accident during the Vietnam war, has affected billions of people in small and large ways.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 16:22:30 -0800

Oh the year was twenty twenty one (How I wish I was in Port Said now!) We were bound for Rotterdam When we made a hell of a traffic jam God damn them all, it should have been fine We'd take the canal and we'd make good time We'd be safe home soon, have no fear! Now the boat's stuck hard and we're in the way You can't go through the Suez today Oh the Ever Given was an awesome sight (How I wish I was in Port Said now!) She was stacked to the funnels with treasure and tat Hope you weren't expecting any of that (Chorus) From the sea we came to the canal (How I wish I was in Port Said now!) We were six miles through when the wind got strong That's when it all went badly wrong (Chorus) We caught the wind, blew to one side (How I wish I was in Port Said now!) The thruster and the rudder couldn't hold her back And she went into the bank with a terrible smack (Chorus) The bow dug a hole in the eastern shore (How I wish I was in Port Said now!) The ship carried on and the stern swung round 'Till she lay with both her ends aground (Chorus) Every tug they came to haul us out (How I wish I was in Port Said now!) They've heaved and strained with rope and winch But the ship's not moved a single inch (Chorus) Now here we lie on our third day here (How I wish I was in Port Said now!) Don't come this way, you won't get far Take a long trip around Africa (Chorus)

By: cali

cali — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 16:58:09 -0800

Update! "The situation has gotten so desperate that an elite salvage squad is due to arrive Thursday to work on prising the Ever Given from the bank of the canal, where it's blocking oceangoing carriers that haul everything from oil to consumer goods." Link to story, and more on the salvage master, Nick Sloane.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:05:45 -0800

Nick Sloane, Salvage Master Sounds like a Phil Hartman SNL bit

By: JHarris

JHarris — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:08:12 -0800

Do not, I repeat, do not, under any circumstance, connect these bumpers to a score display at the ends of the canal. Picard voice: "All hands, prepare for multiball!"

By: JHarris

JHarris — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:09:41 -0800

BTW, this is a wonderful thread.

By: double bubble

double bubble — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:19:20 -0800

I am not done reading yet, but that article about Nick Sloane is one of the most gripping tales I have ever read.

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:20:47 -0800

Viking Stavanger is the name of a Norwegian soccer team That face when you inadvertently said that you'd have a fling with an entire Norwegian soccer team.

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:43:26 -0800

I am not done reading yet, but that article about Nick Sloane is one of the most gripping tales I have ever read. Partially due to the fact it was written by William Langewiesche. You should also check out his piece on the El Faro disaster.

By: Silvery Fish

Silvery Fish — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:51:09 -0800

@double bubble — do read The Grey Seas Under, by Farley Mowat (another great Salvager's name). I came to this book unprepared in my early 20s and realized I had not been living big enough. ... and has lead me to yelling out loud "Force 10 gale!" during the most challenging parts of my life.

By: saturday_morning

saturday_morning — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 18:01:26 -0800

That face when you inadvertently said that you'd have a fling with an entire Norwegian soccer team. But not bring them home for christmas.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 18:24:26 -0800

And, of course, (provided by @Thinkwert): I have blocked the canal that was in Egypt and which you were probably using for the global economy Forgive me It went sideways so fast and out of control

By: medusa

medusa — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 18:50:14 -0800

BTW, this is a wonderful thread. Seconding this. I live in Colorado...so without getting too upsetting let me just say that a thread of lighthearted diversion and nerdery is sorely welcome this week.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:10:53 -0800

@philgibson01 on Twitter: It's a lovely day in the Suez Canal, and you are a horrible giant container ship

By: ctmf

ctmf — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:14:56 -0800

> D Keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty. > F I am disabled; communicate with me. > G I require a pilot. > M My vessel is stopped and making no way through the water. > V I require assistance. > Z I require a tug. Probably settle for November Charlie. "No" + "Yes" = "Distress" And I'm not sure there's an agreed-on sequence for "No shit, I can see that without the little flags, asshole."

By: medusa

medusa — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:15:05 -0800

By: Huffy Puffy

Huffy Puffy — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:39:26 -0800

I like big boats and I cannot lie You other brothers can't deny That when a boat walks in with an itty bitty crew And a round bow in your sand you get stuck Wanna pull around 'cause you notice that boat's aground Right to the canal she's bearin' I'm hooked and I can't stop starin' Oh boaty I wanna get wit'cha And see more pictures My pilots tried to warn me But that jam you're in makes jokes so corny &c

By: cendawanita

cendawanita — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:50:29 -0800

Jesse the K: Here's an 8-episode podcast all about shipping containers: https://pod.link/1209559177 I second this series. I got recommended this podcast a couple of years ago. Very enjoyable! I wish I can find more, and I'm looking forward to that youtube channel of that ship captain mentioned upthread.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:55:57 -0800

Also I am legit considering a metatalk asking people to please post links to the original versions of the songs when they rewrite the lyrics because 90% of the time I have no idea what you all are on about. Yeah, that's a good idea. Here's links for all the musical/poetical/literary references I could find earlier in the thread. nickggully: "There once was a ship that put to sea..." is based on The Wellerman (which was the song that kicked off the Sea Shanty TikTok craze). mandolin conspiracy: "Full fathom five..." is from The Tempest. evidenceofabsence: "And you may ask yourself..." is quoting Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads. flabdablet: "I like bao buns and I cannot lie" is riffing on Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-A-Lot. zerobyproxy: "Oh the Suez they say..." is based on The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot. miguelcervantes quoting @krfabian: "my name is Boat" is aping a poem from Reddit which became a meme. automatronic: "Oh the year was twenty twenty one..." is bastardising Barrett's Privateers by Stan Rogers. jokeefe quoting @Thinkwert: "I have blocked / the canal..." is spoofing This is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 20:49:37 -0800

I have blocked the canal that was in Egypt

ALL THESE CANALS ARE YOURS  — EXCEPT SUEZ.
ATTEMPT NO CROSSING THERE

By: vrakatar

vrakatar — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:01:22 -0800

So is it still stuck?

By: lostburner

lostburner — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:04:25 -0800

Still stuck.

By: vrakatar

vrakatar — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:08:44 -0800

Well, fuck.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:15:10 -0800

The last I heard, it has been pulled aside to permit some traffic, but I cannot find that article again

By: cmyk

cmyk — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:18:42 -0800

How do the dirt sides of the canal not .. crumble into the water? I do not know enough about this to even know what words to search for. I keep expecting the little excavator (he's trying his best!) to get sucked into a quicksand puddle of sandy slurry where the bow is stuck in the wall.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:27:04 -0800

How do the dirt sides of the canal not .. crumble into the water? Short answer: civil engineering works. The canal banks are not just "dirt"; they're carefully constructed earthworks built to withstand the endless wash of countless passing ships, and pretty resistant to crumbling because they have to be.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:50:22 -0800

Metafilter: pretty resistant to crumbling

By: oulipian

oulipian — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 22:00:29 -0800

I'm no stranger to sand I know the Suez, or thought I did Before I blacked out and crashed into land This wouldn't happen to any smaller ship I just wanna tell you how I'm keeling Gonna blame it on that wind Ever Given's all washed up Ever Given's broken down Ever Given's run aground in desert-dust Ever Given's stuck sideways Ever Given's causing delays Ever Given's wishing its bow wasn't bulbous

By: theory

theory — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 23:37:12 -0800

Maybe if a certain canal embankment had read a certain book, we wouldn't have found ourselves in such a pickle. Sort of related: a great (and eponysterical) comment from a few years ago defending the widely-mocked book.

By: ellieBOA

ellieBOA — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 02:49:49 -0800

Omg the memes are bringing me so much joy! My fave so far. Via

By: Ray Walston, Luck Dragon

Ray Walston, Luck Dragon — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:22:44 -0800

For the last month and a half I've been dealing with the kidney stones from hell, so I know how this canal feels

By: anshuman

anshuman — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:40:54 -0800

They're saying it might take weeks. (Maybe just managing expectations, but.)

By: anshuman

anshuman — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:54:14 -0800

Tao boat. (I meant to link it above.)

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 03:57:28 -0800

Ah a 40 ft container is over the carrying capacity of a Chinook, so that idea is out. Supposing *two* Chinooks carried it together, using a strand of creeper held under the dorsal guiding feathers?

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 04:25:55 -0800

Supposing *two* Chinooks carried it together, using a strand of creeper held under the dorsal guiding feathers? European or African Chinooks?

By: double bubble

double bubble — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 05:13:24 -0800

" The Japanese owner of the giant cargo ship that has been blocking Egypt's Suez Canal since Tuesday has apologised for the disruption to global trade." "We're sorry to see what you found! We would like to report this to our quality team and replace the box."

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 06:04:35 -0800

The Japanese owner of the giant cargo ship That is a rather uncommon way to spell "Taiwanese".

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 06:19:12 -0800

It's just gone noon Half past monsoon On the banks of the Suez Canal Here lies the boat Totally not afloat Digger man says, have to get my pal...

By: Lanark

Lanark — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 06:37:16 -0800

Supposing *two* Chinooks carried it together, using a strand of creeper held under the dorsal guiding feathers? A Chinook with rotors operating is 30 m so they would need to fly very close together. The two blades on a Chinook rotate in opposite directions, so if they kept the front of one Chinook next to the rear of the other and exactly matched their speed, I guess it might work:

                   -----------!-----------                 -----------!-----------
  -----------!-----------  /=====\            -----------!-----------  /=====\   
            |===\_________/_  o  |                      |===\_________/_  o  |   
           /_]    o o  o o____   /                     /_]    o o  o o____   /   
          <_]___[]_______<____>/                      <_]___[]_______<____>/      
              o          \   o                       /     o              o       
                          \                        /         
                       ____\_____________________/____
                       |             |               |
                       |   FRAGILE   |  DO NOT DROP  |
                       |_____________|_______________|

By: kalimac

kalimac — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 06:58:24 -0800

do read The Grey Seas Under, by Farley Mowat (another great Salvager's name). I came to this book unprepared in my early 20s and realized I had not been living big enough. An extremely strong second to this recommendation. The opening of this book is simply sublime. (Also, when you're done, pick up The Boat that Wouldn't Float by the same author, which is head and shoulders the funniest book I've ever read.) Also between this thread and the cascade of memes, I have been absolutely delighted by, er, the grinding halt of a significant percentage of global shipping. Just another note that I deeply appreciate all of this.

By: nubs

nubs — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:02:50 -0800

In ongoing transportation disruption news, in Canada, a subway station is shut down due to the presence of a beaver.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:11:15 -0800

Here's an interesting take I hadn't seen yet: the sides of the canal are not straight. They're very sloped. So the ship is way more stuck than it appears.

By: scorbet

scorbet — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:24:33 -0800

That is a rather uncommon way to spell "Taiwanese". The Ever Given is owned by Shoei Kisen Kaisha (who are Japanese) but operated by Evergreen (who are Taiwanese.)

By: confluency

confluency — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 07:47:39 -0800

Here's an interesting theory about the exact effect that may have caused this: The bank effect and the big boat blocking the Suez

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 08:03:08 -0800

Here's an interesting take I hadn't seen yet: the sides of the canal are not straight. They're very sloped. So the ship is way more stuck than it appears. The critical angle of repose for dry sand is like ~30-37°. For wet sand it's as high as 45°.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 08:20:28 -0800

Some people are being pieces of shit on the internet because they heard the boat's captain was a woman -- which is not true. FYI. Thing is, though, what if she was? True equality will come when a woman can fuck up hugely, or just be mediocre, and not be considered a reflection on anyone else.

By: double bubble

double bubble — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 08:51:01 -0800

If I understand it correctly from above, the pilots that take the boats through the Suez (and other canals, ports, etc) are highly-trained experts in their respective waterways. If so, I'm going to start giving myself a break for all the little things I screw up daily.

By: rockindata

rockindata — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 08:56:33 -0800

If we are talking Mowat, don't forget The Serpent's Coil, his other marine salvage book about the Foundation Josephine, the successor to the Foundation Franklin .

By: Too-Ticky

Too-Ticky — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:10:38 -0800

I hope they're being careful with our new melamine butter dish with a bamboo lid. I've been looking forward to it for a while.

By: FirstMateKate

FirstMateKate — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:11:50 -0800

I'm posting this after only reading about half the comments, but to everyone just now finding out they really like high-stakes logistical adventures, the (nonfiction) book Road Fever by Tim Cahill is worth a read. He drove from the southernmost point of South America to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, breaking the work record. This was back in 1987, I think, so there were no cellphones or other modern technology to aid him. Super fun read.

By: JoeZydeco

JoeZydeco — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:31:25 -0800

And as we all banter back and forth, one lone steamshovel tries to save the world economy.

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:35:42 -0800

Mary Anne!

By: medusa

medusa — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:38:02 -0800

In ongoing transportation disruption news, in Canada, a subway station is shut down due to the presence of a beaver. What could be more Canadian than this? Nothing could. This is infinity Canadian.

By: double bubble

double bubble — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:44:26 -0800

One lone steam shovel. One lone civil rights organizer. One lone medical expert. Thought they be lone, still they are mighty.

By: double bubble

double bubble — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:47:20 -0800

One lone voter. The metaphor is screaming to be heard in so many ways.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:59:46 -0800

I feel like that lone digger image is a metaphor for infrastructure week. Wait, is this infrastructure week?

By: TheophileEscargot

TheophileEscargot — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 10:03:32 -0800

Guardian: I've sailed the Suez canal on a cargo ship – it's no wonder the Ever Given got stuck:

Although the official reason given so far for the Ever Given's plight is that it was blown sideways by wind, I do wonder. In the vast majority of maritime accidents, human error is at fault. And no wonder: seafarers, working in ever smaller crews on ever larger ships, are knackered. Most on my journey were old enough to remember when they could stop for lunch in port. Now, ships are rarely in port for more than several hours, and those are busy. As we entered the canal, transiting south with our mostly empty boxes to collect made-in-China consumables and essentials such as medicine, the second officer was operating on three nights of three hours' sleep, and would have no sleep during the transit. There is, as the Ever Given demonstrates, much to look out for during the passage.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 10:13:28 -0800

What could be more Canadian than this? Could have been a portage the beaver was blocking.

By: Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 10:18:35 -0800

There is a very good industrial documentary history involving one Mike Mulligan, and one steam shovel, "Mary Anne" which may prove instructional at this point.

By: Reverend John

Reverend John — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 10:29:20 -0800

I hope that Mr. Mulligan has learned his lesson about leaving an exit route, or that Mary Anne has gotten a snorkel.

By: gwint

gwint — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 10:57:54 -0800

That ship ain't moving until this thread gets at least 400 comments.

By: Cash4Lead

Cash4Lead — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:03:22 -0800

Oh No! Big Boat Is Stuck

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:14:26 -0800

> Could have been a portage the beaver was blocking. Do we know the beaver isn't the absconded Ever Given pilot, back from a successful dam raid?

By: praemunire

praemunire — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:14:33 -0800

Shoulda used SmahtPahk.

By: Mr.Encyclopedia

Mr.Encyclopedia — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:21:06 -0800

Earlier in the thread I said it would have been easier to block the suez by scuttling the Ever Given, but it seems like the Ever Given only floats about four meters above the bottom of the canal, so if it was scuttled it'd still be sticking out of the water looking completely normal, and could be refloated fairly quickly by pumping the water out again. Similarly with blowing the boat up, it'd be much easier to remove debris that you don't care about damaging. In this case, they're trying their best to not damage the boat as they dig it out, and thus it's going to take a lot more time and effort to get it unstuck.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:28:40 -0800

That ship ain't moving until this thread gets at least 400 comments. Well I think one comment per meter of overall length is the industry standard metric

By: traveler_

traveler_ — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:35:22 -0800

You have to check the conversion tables for salt water vs fresh water LWL though, so in the Suez it's 1.02 comments per meter.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:47:31 -0800

Well shit. I stand corrected.

By: medusa

medusa — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:49:13 -0800

how dare you forget the .02

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:51:03 -0800

That ship ain't moving until this thread gets at least 400 comments. A man needs his containers

By: ctmf

ctmf — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:55:51 -0800

the pilots that take the boats through the Suez (and other canals, ports, etc) are highly-trained experts in their respective waterways So, the pilots don't actually drive the ship or even take over command, though the ship's captain may delegate them the authority to give the helm steering and engine orders (with the captain present as the ultimate authority with veto power). Some captains don't even do that, they have the pilot recommend action to them, which they then order themselves if they agree. The pilot is the wise old-timer who knows the area like the back of his or her hand. You need to start your turn when that rock lines up with that tree, gonna need x speed to avoid drifting into there, kind of thing. If you lose steering or propulsion, none of that knowledge is going to do you a bit of good, and the captain will immediately re-take the conn (and never gave up the 'deck', which is everything about being in charge except for driving.)

By: Reverend John

Reverend John — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:05:38 -0800

how dare you forget the .02 posted by medusa at 1:49 PM on March 25 You've got some nerve. Why don't you spend less time worrying about that .02 and more time avoiding Bob Uecker's boat.

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:22:38 -0800

From Reverend John's link: Converted in 1966-67 to a self-unloading cement carrier for Medusa Cement (Cement Transit) as the MEDUSA CHALLENGER So, Perseus was taken?

By: medusa

medusa — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:23:56 -0800

Hey there, I'm the largest cement carrier on the great lakes. How about Bob Uecker and you other assholes avoid me?

By: medusa

medusa — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:25:48 -0800

On the internet, no one knows you can automatically unload your 67,000 barrel capacity of medusa cement at the rate of 8,000 barrels per hour.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:31:04 -0800

Hey there, I'm the largest cement carrier on the great lakes. How about Bob Uecker and you other assholes avoid me? Hey there, I'm a lighthouse. Your call.

By: Carillon

Carillon — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:31:57 -0800

I have the phrase it's stuck, it's stuck sung in my head to the tune of Seven Drunken Nights, and it's fun. I don't have more lyrics than that, but it's a fun little ditty.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:32:30 -0800

Sounds like a golden opportunity for me to finally open up my competing canal. How about the way the Egyptians did things previously? Put it on rollers and pull it across.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:40:03 -0800

She's stuck She's stuck She's stuck She's in my head

By: Teegeeack AV Club Secretary

Teegeeack AV Club Secretary — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:52:20 -0800

"Your goal as a ship operator should be to never have your Wikipedia link turn blue." -- @mosheroperandi (For those who don't want to visit Twitter, this helpful advice is accompanied by a Wikipedia screenshot of a page listing all of Evergreen's ships. Almost every ship's link is red, which indicates there is no Wikipedia article for that ship. The only one in blue is Ever Given.)

By: interogative mood

interogative mood — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:53:29 -0800

Are we at the part of the disaster movie yet where the protagonist realizes the only solution is to blow it up in a massive, possibly nuclear, explosion. I hear that President Sisi has been in touch with the Oregon Highway department to see if they could provide some technical assistance given their past experience blowing up beached obstructions.

By: TedW

TedW — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 13:43:24 -0800

The person who posted the photo also said that she thought this was the ship that "cut them off" (however you do that at that scale) on their way into the canal. This comment and the one a couple below it concern a couple of boats racing across the Great Lakes. This blog post gives more details; at $2000.00/hr to operate and 4+ hours to refuel, there is a financial incentive to cut in line. I'm sure the stakes get even bigger with bigger ships like this. And based on the the blog post I linked, captains who engage in risky behavior aren't sanctioned in any meaningful way unless there is a crash. Add to that the ever increasing production pressures alluded to elsewhere in this thread that are totally consistent with late-stage capitalism, and we can expect to see more big mishaps like this. At least this one didn't involve loss of life, like El Faro. Or even complete loss of cargo, like the Golden Ray.

By: jeremias

jeremias — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 15:48:15 -0800

Just saw a news article that snapped everything into place.

The ship is 400m long
The delays due to the blockage are now $400m per fucking hour.
This thread needs to get to 400 comments in order to unblock the ship.

Boom! We make a deal with the United Nations or some shit and MeFi is funded for the the next 4000 years.

By: notoriety public

notoriety public — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 15:57:45 -0800

That staggering price tag per hour is why I think that, while the salvage crews don't particularly want to destroy the ship or the cargo, they aren't going to take any particular care to avoid damage if it gets in the way of removing the block. The thing they're there to salvage is the Suez Canal.

By: Lanark

Lanark — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:02:12 -0800

The delays due to the blockage are now $400m per fucking hour. It is delaying $400 million an hour in goods, thats not an actual loss, if this drags on they will all just sail around South Africa. 50 ships per day costing an extra $350,000 each for the longer route = $17.5 million per day or $730,000 per hour. The MV Ever Given is worth around $100 million

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:06:39 -0800

Have they tried taking the air out of the tires?

By: Lanark

Lanark — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:06:39 -0800

Or to put this another way each day $400m of goods will cost an extra $0.73m to deliver which is less than 0.2% of the goods value.

By: unearthed

unearthed — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:24:41 -0800

This story just keeps on Given

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:49:03 -0800

It is delaying $400 million an hour in goods, thats not an actual loss It costs a quarter-million dollars in fees to just go through the Suez Canal and every day about 50 ships go through so Egypt is losing $12.5M daily in government revenues, which is probably a pretty big deal to them. It's a straight loss for the Egyptian government, plus they have to deal with costs associated with fixing everything.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:49:24 -0800

The person who posted the first photo on Instagram has taken their account private.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:49:51 -0800

I mean, I calculate they lose roughly 0.003% of their annual government revenues every day, which, sure, not a big deal, but I'd sure they'd rather lose 0.0%.

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:52:38 -0800

Have they tried turning it off and back on again?

By: subdee

subdee — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:03:06 -0800

the person who posted the first photo on instagram has taken their account private And the video from the captain of one of the ships waiting on line was removed from youtube. I was actually really surprised by that video, you never see videos of the global shipping routes like this. But I bet just this one event has educated a lot of people about the fragility of the global supply chain...

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:18:13 -0800

https://gcaptain.com/maritime-word-of-the-day-allision/ google cache of 'https://www.vesseltracker.com/de/Ships/Ever-Given-9811000.html' from googling 'ever given hamburg'"

Die neuesten Nachrichten Investigations against captain after allision Tue Feb 12 10:06:13 CET 2019 Timsen The "Ever Given" remained moored at the ECT Delta Container Terminal in Rotterdam on Feb 12, while the investigations were going on. The "Finkenwerder" was pulled to the Shipyard von Cölln, Finkenwerder, on Feb 10 at 7 a.m. The ferry pier in Blankenese including the restaurants Fischclub and Ponton op'n Bulln remained closed for an indefinite time. Investigators were on scene in the afternoon of Feb 11. The police in Hamburg investigated against the 39 year old Indian master of the "Ever Given" for suspected negligent assault and dangerous intervention in shipping. Two police officers remained aboard the ship during the voyage to Rotterdam. They conducted interrogations and secured the data, including the radar images and conversations between the bridge and the pilot station, as well as the voyage data recorder. There were no indications of a blackout which could have been ascertained very quickly via the voyage data recorder. A navigation error appeared as a more likely cause of the accident. At the time of the collision, two pilots were aboard the freighter. However, they were not the focus of the investigation, because they had only anadvisory function at the unmooring maneuver at the Eurogate and the transit down the Elbe. It also became known that a tug accompanied the freighter, but had no line connection. The tug 'ZP Bulldog' had assisted at the bow and the 'ZP Boxer' at the rear which escorted the freighter on its way down the Elbe. The "Ever Given", a Megamax carrier, was allowed to sail to a maximum of six Beaufort wind. When unmooring at 8.26 a.m. there were no wind bans. At the time of the allision at 9:28 a.m. the wind speed in Hamburg was five to six Beaufort from the southwest. Two minutes after the accident , a wind ban was issued by the traffic control Cuxhaven. The wind strengths were already strong and the weather conditions got worse. The "Ever Given" left Rotterdam again on Feb 12 at 8.45 p.m. and headed to Suez, ETA Feb 19. German report with video: https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/ndr_aktuell/Warum-kam-der-Frachter-in-Blankenese-vom-Kurs-ab,ndraktuell49188.html Ever Given released after investigations Sun Feb 10 12:52:09 CET 2019 Timsen The "Ever Given" was released on Feb 9 after the police in Brunsbüttel had finished their investigations. The ship had only suffered scrapes and dents at the starboard side aft but remained seaworthy. It berthed at the ECT Delta Container Terminal in the Amazone Port of Rotterdam on Feb 10 at 10.10 a.m. where the German police continued its investigations. Initially it was thought that the ship had suffered a blackout, but now it looked like a storm gust had pushed the vessel to port side. The damage to the ferry and the ferry pontoons was at least several 100.000 Euro. The ferry berth in Blankenese will have to remain closed for an indefinite time due to the damage suffered. The future of the "Finkenwerder" was uncertain in regard of the enormous damage to superstructure, wheelhouse and hull. The ferry was pulled to the Shipyard von Cölln, Finkenwerder, on Feb 10 at 7 a.m. Photos: http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=2966954 http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=2966953 http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=2966949 Allision on the Elbe Sat Feb 09 11:18:08 CET 2019 Timsen The "Ever Given" veered off course on the Elbe off Blankenese in the foremidday of Feb 9, 2019. It had left the Eurogate Terminal in Hamburg-Waltershof at 9.40 a.m. bound to Rotterdam. The ship became unmanoeverable and despite tug assistance it slammed into the passenger ferry "Finkenwerder" which was berthed at the ferry pier in Blankenese. There were no passengers on board. The crew escaped unhurt, but the ferry was severely damaged. It suffered a breach above the waterline, and the upper deck and the wheelhouse were destroyed. The fire brigade attended with three units. The "Ever Given" proceeded towards Brunsbüttel where investigators of the police would board the ship. The police boat "Bürgermeister Weichmann" was deployed to the scene. The ship resumed its voyage to Rotterdam the same day and berthed at the ECT Delta Container Terminal in the Amazone Port on Feb 10 at 10.10 a.m. German reports with photos and video: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/Blankenese-Frachter-rammt-Faehre-auf-der-Elbe,schiffskollision212.html https://www.hamburg1.de/nachrichten/39213/400_Meter_Schiff_kollidiert_mit_HADAG_Faehre.html http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/hamburg-frachter-rammt-faehre-auf-der-elbe-a-1252468.html https://www.noz.de/deutschland-welt/vermischtes/artikel/1651393/400-meter-langes-containerschiff-kollidiert-auf-elbe-mit-faehre#gallery&66950&0&1651393

http://forum.shipspotting.com/index.php?topic=16489.0 2019 Youtube: Container Ship "Ever Given" Allided with Berthed Ferry "Finkenwerder" in Hamburg

By: jenkinsEar

jenkinsEar — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:25:11 -0800

Is the Ship Still Stuck?

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:27:51 -0800

from chaoticgouda on tumblr:

shipment officers, gently nudging Ever Given with their 8 tugboats: Ever Given move out of the way please so you don't block the entire global trade

Ever Given, her lamplights enormous: you SHOVE ever given? you shove her hull like the big boulder? oh! oh! no commerce for human! no commerce for human for One Thousand Years!!!

By: merriment

merriment — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:33:38 -0800

Inevitable Ever Given/Suez Canal slash fic on AO3.

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:50:25 -0800

I's the b'y that wedges the boat And I's the b'y that sails her I's the b'y that jams up the trade So no one gets home to Lizer Get the backhoe, get it to go Get the backhoe, dig it down International shipping has stalled All around the Suez

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:58:31 -0800

Inevitable Ever Given/Suez Canal slash fic on AO3. fandom ship dynamics

... For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of a "ship," it's a very popular term within fandom, a shortened form of the word "relationship" that's used both as a noun to describe a romantic pairing you love (e.g. "Han/Leia is my favorite ship"), and a verb to describe the act of "shipping" that pairing, or rooting for them to get together and live happily ever after (e.g. "I ship Rory/Paris"). The key to this meme is that ~~it doesn't actually involve a discussion of specific ships.~~ ...

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 18:00:54 -0800

Don't make me dig out the Melville.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 18:47:09 -0800

If the Melville is too firmly embedded, it's best to have a doctor extract it.

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 19:16:40 -0800

Pounded in the canal by a giant container ship

By: vrakatar

vrakatar — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 19:16:46 -0800

I just got home from work is it still stuck?

By: mandolin conspiracy

mandolin conspiracy — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 19:18:23 -0800

Still stuck. In the muck.

By: vrakatar

vrakatar — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 19:19:16 -0800

fuuuuuck.

By: rodlymight

rodlymight — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 19:24:24 -0800

That's bad luck

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 19:24:54 -0800

Finally, a use for those 50 gallon drums of lube they sell on Amazon. You can stick your cargo ship up your canal...sideways...and without the aid of lubricant.

By: interogative mood

interogative mood — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 20:15:28 -0800

Egypt issued a RFP today looking for suppliers who can provide 59 tons of Colace on short notice to deal with a blockage.

By: polymath

polymath — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 20:36:59 -0800

You can stick your cargo ship up your canal...sideways...and without the aid of lubricant. Remember, only stick cargo ships with flanged bases up your canal.

By: Callisto Prime

Callisto Prime — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 20:40:15 -0800

> Your goal as a ship operator should be to never have your Wikipedia link turn blue. For those who appreciate such things, there is, of course, an argument accompanying this table about whether status "In service" accurately reflects the current status of the ship.

By: Callisto Prime

Callisto Prime — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 20:44:08 -0800

> I need to find more channels/accounts/podcasts on logistical nightmares cendawanita, you may appreciate the podcast "Cautionary Tales". I'm not sure if it's active right now, but I've burned through about half of the archives to date, and there are just so many mistakes. It's glorious. > because it turns out this is my jam ps. Excellent pun.

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 21:02:22 -0800

Oh this is totally gonna be mentioned on the next Well There's Your Problem

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 21:22:05 -0800

All this talk of ships makes me want to reread The Shipping News again.

By: Mister Bijou

Mister Bijou — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 21:58:53 -0800

"When you drive a boat, you are always in drift. You are attached to nothing. Stuff happens in the water beneath you that does not make any intuitive sense. Sometimes your stern (your tail) moves faster than your bow (your nose), and in a different direction. same direction at the same speed, but it's not the direction the bow is pointed. On a boat, you don't always go where you're pointed." The bank effect and the big boat blocking the Suez

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 22:19:22 -0800

The boat as metaphor

By: SystematicAbuse

SystematicAbuse — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 22:43:35 -0800

I'm just trying to help get to 400 comments.

By: vrakatar

vrakatar — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 23:00:07 -0800

I live near the site of one of the deadliest, most gruesome groundings in maritime history. The wreck of the City of Columbus. Basic story at w-pedia. Comprehensive report from 1884.

By: Carillon

Carillon — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 23:08:26 -0800

This whole situation led me to finding out about the Yellow Fleet, which I thought was really interesting! Essentially during the 6 day war, the Egyptians scuttled ships and blocked the canal, trapping 15 ships in the canal for 8 years! They became known as the yellow fleet due to the sand and dust buildup.

By: Carillon

Carillon — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 23:09:58 -0800

Thinking about it I'm actually not sure if they were container ships at that point, or if it was still mainly break bulk.

By: Fiasco da Gama

Fiasco da Gama — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 00:01:04 -0800

[coughs, clears throat] Far canal

By: theory

theory — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 00:57:28 -0800

The Suez Canal Authority have released a dramatically scored video showing them to be on top of the situation. The centerpiece of the clip is a tension-filled shot of several official-looking people on the bridge of a tugboat attached by a line to the bow of Ever Given. They watch keenly as... not much happens. In the background, someone appears to attend to a breakfast buffet. The SCA has also said they'll need to dredge 15,000 to 20,000 m3 (530,000 to 706,000 ft3) of sand, reaching a depth of 12-16 meters (39-52 feet), in order to re-float the stuck ship. Several LNG tankers have been diverted to alternate destinations or are re-routing around the Cape of Good Hope. And given the large number of vessels now waiting to transit the canal, many operators of ships that would be near the back of the queue are also considering taking the longer route, since they'd likely have to wait a few days even after the blockage is cleared.

By: confluency

confluency — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 01:13:11 -0800

The Guardian is crowdsourcing suggestions for freeing the ship. I'm sure that the signal to noise ratio of the responses will be exceptional.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 02:01:54 -0800

Thinking about it I'm actually not sure if they were container ships at that point, or if it was still mainly break bulk. Outside the US, the first use of a dedicated container ship was in 1966, between New York and Rotterdam. This was the SS Fairland, owned by Sea-Land Service. The only US-registered ships that were part of the Yellow Fleet were the Farrell Lines' SS African Glen and the Marine Carriers' SS Observer carrying wheat; the other countries' ships at that time could not have been container ships either. Looking at a few photos, they were all regular cargo.

By: myotahapea

myotahapea — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 02:04:44 -0800

> The Suez Canal Authority have released a dramatically scored video The Suez Canal Authority hasn't gotten the ship unstuck yet but they did make this great sizzle reel of them not getting the ship unstuck set to what sounds like a royalty-free version of the Tenet soundtrack

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 02:07:19 -0800

Hey someone in their social media department has the justify their After Effects career development course they just expensed.

By: ellieBOA

ellieBOA — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 02:40:20 -0800

Guy With The Digger At Suez Canal [Twitter]

By: cheshyre

cheshyre — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 04:15:24 -0800

AO3 now lists 18 works for the pairing Ever Given/Suez, including a tribute to the Tay Bridge Disaster, which begins:

Beautiful ship of Ever Given! Alas! I am very sorry to say, That shipping has been blocked for [pending] days, On the 23 of March 2021, Which will be mem'd for a very long time.

Speaking of memes, Miette has chimed in.

By: Teegeeack AV Club Secretary

Teegeeack AV Club Secretary — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 04:16:36 -0800

"1) As a former sailor here's my hot take on the stuck boat in the Suez. I'm actually in admiration of the skill of whoever did this. They managed a crash in one of the busiest water ways and all they damaged was a wall. No lives lost. No other boat involved, no damaged cargo. A+" -- @Nature_Grrrl Interesting thread evaluating the captain of the Ever Given, and the low quality of Suez pilots.

By: Too-Ticky

Too-Ticky — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 04:21:58 -0800

double bubble: " The Japanese owner of the giant cargo ship that has been blocking Egypt's Suez Canal since Tuesday has apologised for the disruption to global trade." At least they're not in denial.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 04:43:09 -0800

A short news article -- a little about supply chain effects and the history of the Suez canal.

By: sepviva

sepviva — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 04:43:39 -0800

I am inspired to see there are women on some of these ship crews.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 04:49:39 -0800

I know this is just for scale, but I can't help imagining someone navigating the Suez Canal so poorly that their container ship ended up square in the middle of the Central Park reservoir. By now there must be a fair number of people, supply chain managers prominently among them, wishing it to be so.

By: dominik

dominik — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 04:52:26 -0800

Ships are turning around.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 05:03:02 -0800

Holy shit, I had actually not quite realised yet just how thoroughly this ship is stuck. All those photos showing it wedged in from one side of the channel to the other? Well, it's actually wedged about a HUNDRED METRES FURTHER than it looks. Here's the ship's position overlaid on the depth chart for that area. The dredged channel is only the first two thirds of the width of the water there. The whole third to the east is shallows, with less depth than the draft of the Ever Given. About a third of the ship is sitting on the bottom. A third of a 400m long ship. LITERALLY AN ENTIRE FOOTBALL FIELD of hull is sitting on the ground. Now go back to that first photo you saw of the ship and look at how much of the red anti-fouling paint you can see. All of that is supposed to be below the waterline. But at the bow, there's like two container heights of it visible. A container is 8'6" tall. The ship has driven so far up the slope that the bow is up by TWENTY FEET. Here's that photo again, with a cross-section showing what you're actually seeing. That shit is STUUUUUUUUCK.

By: nickggully

nickggully — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 05:08:17 -0800

I wonder how fast it was going to beach like that. The crew must have felt the noise and realized the inertia would take them into big big problems the entire time.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 05:11:39 -0800

I am absolutely captivated by this like nothing I've felt in some time.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 05:16:12 -0800

At least they're not in denial. Yeah, da Nile is a few hundred miles away to the west....they are in da Suez

By: FairWitness

FairWitness — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 05:45:27 -0800

Has anybody seen the plunger :emoji:?

By: TedW

TedW — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 05:56:49 -0800

After seeing just how stuck the Ever Given is, I have to wonder if it would just be quicker to dig a new canal around it. But I have to agree with iamkimiam that this is absolutely fascinating.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:34:24 -0800

There's a pleasure in watching someone else work. In this case, there's a relief in seeing an absolutely massive, star-spangled fuck-up, and knowing it wasn't your fault and it's not your job to fix it.

By: BWA

BWA — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:36:45 -0800

Somewhat related, if you're interested in the financial aspect of international shipping in the age of covid: "Why are Billions of Dollars Worth of Ships Being Intentionally Destroyed?", dated this past December.

By: oulipian

oulipian — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:36:56 -0800

Well, the Suez is totally borked for a generation or two. Time to build an alternative canal! *Looks at map* We can start by, um, cutting across Iran here from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian, and then, uh, gee, it looks like the Volga River goes in generally the right direction, let's try that! *lineup of ships intensifies*

By: acb

acb — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:47:35 -0800

They could cut a relief canal across the other side of Sinai, except for the geopolitics (it'd go along the border between Israel and Egypt and cut through Gaza).

By: BWA

BWA — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:53:09 -0800

Time to build an alternative canal! Been there, done that.

By: TWinbrook8

TWinbrook8 — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:59:34 -0800

All the ships heading north that were waiting in the canal behind the Ever Given have been towed out (backwards). Link

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 07:19:55 -0800

They could cut a relief canal across the other side of Sinai, except for the geopolitics (it'd go along the border between Israel and Egypt and cut through Gaza). "You know what this map of the Middle East needs? More straight lines!"

By: purple_frogs

purple_frogs — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 07:28:28 -0800

What about just digging a small detour that zigzags around the ship? It could eventually be expanded into a second "lane" when the ship is finally dug free?

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 07:41:07 -0800

I need to know what website or news organization has the best liveblog or whatever for updates on this poor ship, that I am now completely obsessed with, to the point that I will read its tell-all in 40 years after the booze and pills get it thrown off several Hollywood movies it was supposed to headline. ANYWAY, best site for updates?

By: sjswitzer

sjswitzer — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 07:46:47 -0800

I keep thinking of the current being pinched by that constriction as the tide goes in and out. The channel must be getting seriously gouged. Water behaves very freaky in conditions like this and boating nearby, for instance dredging, would be extremely hazardous.

By: Quasirandom

Quasirandom — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:10:08 -0800

The Tay Bridge Disaster But It's About the Ever Given Blocking the Suez Canal

By: TWinbrook8

TWinbrook8 — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:15:55 -0800

I'm wondering if the ship is acting like a breakwater and with the tides, sediment is building up on one side while gouging out on the other.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:30:07 -0800

ANYWAY, best site for updates? *Awkwardly looks around the room, slowly raises hand to respond to a moderator, and speaks in a hesitant squeaky voice* Errr.....the one we are on now?

By: automatronic

automatronic — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:34:12 -0800

ANYWAY, best site for updates? Yeah, who says you're not here already? At one time the gCaptain forum was pretty good and had a lot of current and ex-professional mariners posting. But it's not what it used to be and the thread about this there is pretty thin. There are some other forums but they're similarly quiet. Everyone working on the situation will be on strict PR lockdown, and there don't seem to be any reporters on site as it stands. So all we're getting is what trickles out in various places on the internet, and this thread has already aggregated more of that than I've seen anywhere else.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:41:55 -0800

That said - the news stories on the main gCaptain site, as opposed to the forum threre, are providing quite a lot of updates and context.

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:49:19 -0800

They could cut a relief canal across the other side of Sinai, except for the geopolitics (it'd go along the border between Israel and Egypt and cut through Gaza). HAHAHAHAHA! And they thought Global Warming was a scam.... HELLOOOO Northwest Passage!

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:57:35 -0800

How could the Ever Given be moved?

An unnamed Egyptian canal authority official told late on Thursday that they would need to remove between 15,000 to 20,000 cubic meters (530,000 to 706,000 cubic feet) of sand to reach a depth of 12 to 16 meters (39 to 52 feet). That depth is likely to allow the ship to float freely again, it said.

Dredging

"The focus now is on dredging to remove sand and mud from around the port side of the vessel's bow. In addition to the dredgers already on site a specialised suction dredger is now with the vessel and will shortly begin work. This dredger can shift 2,000 cubic metres of material every hour," said the ship management company.

How a trailing suction hopper dredge works How cutter suction dredging works These machines do not fuck around You never know what you'll find

By: TedW

TedW — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:07:32 -0800

One of the things I've learned from reading about this is that these ships are big enough to be represented in actual size on maps once you zoom in somewhat. I had never thought about that, but if they are a quarter of a mile long, that would make sense.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:17:59 -0800

Interesting about the suction dredgers. Doing the math, they could move enough sand in about 10 hours. Two thoughts, though, after watching the videos: (1) they may not hit that max speed with Evergreen in their way. (2) That is a fuck-ton of nasty old-canal sand. They'll have to deposit it (environmentally, logistically, and politically safely) ... where?

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:32:57 -0800

That is a fuck-ton of nasty old-canal sand. They'll have to deposit it (environmentally, logistically, and politically safely) ... where? Next to the canal. This is Egypt, and the area is basically good for nothing except being just the area next to the canal. Which might or might not be dug up anyway to make a second lane, with several orders of magnitude more fucktons of nasty old next-to-canal (aka desert) sand having to be deposited elsewhere. Which is not without precedent.

By: Carillon

Carillon — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:34:30 -0800

It's clearly Project Chariot's time to shine!

By: interogative mood

interogative mood — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:35:59 -0800

Israel could build a canal going through the Dead Sea Valley. The impact on the environment and fresh water supplies would be pretty catastrophic, but it has been considered in the past.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:36:40 -0800

Dredging operations around the Ever Given ship blocking Egypt's Suez Canal at 87% of target: Chairman Ahram Online, Friday 26 Mar 2021

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:39:54 -0800

The dredge in use is the cutter suction dredge Mashhour which at 140x22m is a much better scale match to the Ever Given than that cute little 20 ton excavator.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:40:38 -0800

Thank you, Stoneshop. What a smelly place that must be.

By: JDC8

JDC8 — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:42:47 -0800

Are we at the part of the disaster movie yet where the protagonist realizes the only solution is to blow it up in a massive, possibly nuclear, explosion. This appears to be the perfect thread to share my marine-salvage-themed horror movie list! Deep Rising My favorite in this genre. Pluses: packed with character actors, including Wes Studi, Cliff Curtis and the masterfully annoying Kevin J. O'Connor. Minuses: slightly dated CGI monster effects, the sequel-friendly ending did not result in a sequel. Virus Pluses: Non-superhero comic-book movie, Jamie Lee Curtis (as the "final woman," of course) and Cliff Curtis (no relation) in his second marine salvage horror movie! Minuses: the script and some of the special effects. Ghost Ship Pluses: Gabriel Byrne, Karl Urban, Julianna Margulies as the "final woman," the 1960's aesthetic of the opening disaster. Minuses: the poster tag line (Sea Evil?), ending your movie with a Mudvayne song. Bonus movie! Black Sea is not really a horror movie, but more of a men under pressure/disaster environment movie. Features Jude Law and the excellently-named Scoot McNairy performing submarine salvage.

By: sjswitzer

sjswitzer — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 09:57:55 -0800

I've been wondering about the ships planning to detour around Africa. Why would they have enough fuel for that trip? Would the bring it just is case, or will they need to fuel up before proceeding?

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 10:23:43 -0800

Depends. Of course you'd want to bunker where it's cheapest, and in contrast with aviation there's very little penalty in just filling up even if that's more than you need for the trip. Even if they don't have enough fuel for the detour they can definitely reach one of several ports on the way, and their HQ can wrangle the bunker stations to find the one offering maximum bonus stamps and lowest fuel price in the meantime.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 10:32:15 -0800

>It's clearly Project Chariot's time to shine!

'Look, just stay another day,' the man suggested. 'You never did finish telling me about - what was it, Bhughredi?' 'Yes, Bhughredi.' The old drone chuckled. 'Exactly. Bhughredi; the sea nukes and the interference effect thing or whatever it was.' 'Damnedest way to launch a ship,' the old drone agreed, and made a sighing noise. 'So what did happen?' 'Like I said, it's a long story.'

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:17:49 -0800

updates on this poor ship: Eyebrows, you'll be pleased to hear that one of the vessels currently working to get the Ever Given unstuck is the Cabo Gee.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:25:41 -0800

What a smelly place that must be. Pecunia non olet, and USD 700k per passage would do a lot of unstinking. Also, dump stinky stuff in a hot arid place and it stops stinking pretty quickly.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:47:06 -0800

find the one offering maximum bonus stamps I'm now imagining a ship's captain filling up their little stamp booklet and dreaming about what sort of knick-knack he'll be able to get by redeeming them.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:47:18 -0800

...Or are they more like frequent-fueler miles?

By: automatronic

automatronic — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:48:28 -0800

Sarah Gailey: I Like That The Boat Is Stuck.

By: medusa

medusa — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:53:50 -0800

From automatronic's link: Unsticking the boat will require making the boat not be stuck. It won't take a year or more of isolation, or new heights of handwashing, or phone calls to legislators. It won't require the courage to face down militarized police forces or the gumption to get a shot that I know will make me feel a little bad before it makes me a lot safe. Nobody can tell me that if I just work a little harder or stop spending money on avocados or get a side hustle, the boat will get unstuck. If I did all of those things, perfectly right, right now, on tiptoes, there would still be a big stuck boat! Because those things aren't the things that need to happen. What needs to happen is: someone unsticks the boat.

By: glonous keming

glonous keming — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:02:32 -0800

I appreciate where Sarah Gailey is coming from but sadly it doesn't take but a brief perusal of the comments on almost any of the videos posted in this thread to show that there are plenty of utterly insane cohabitants of the USA and the planet desperately grasping for the opposite: the boat being stuck means something and they want it to mean that their cultural/social/political enemies must be righteously destroyed by any means necessary. Sorry to be a downer. I wish it were simpler.

By: BWA

BWA — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:05:17 -0800

the boat being stuck means something It means a bad year for insurers on top of everyone else.

By: acb

acb — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:07:56 -0800

Israel could build a canal going through the Dead Sea Valley. The impact on the environment and fresh water supplies would be pretty catastrophic, but it has been considered in the past. How comfortable would Israel be with a lot of large ships sweeping through its territory? A large bulk carrier of opaque registration would make a pretty workable Trojan horse. And applying intelligence-driven background checks on a par with those you get as a tourist visiting Israel would make the canal uncompetitive with the Suez.

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:21:15 -0800

That ship ain't moving until this thread gets at least 400 comments. So we hit just 400 comments....did it get unstuck? Oh shit sorry...keep forgetting the 1.02 freshwater conversion thing...

By: TWinbrook8

TWinbrook8 — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:53:38 -0800

According to this overhead photo, the dredger is pumping out, not onshore, but further upstream (? further north) which seems like a... temporary fix. Enough to swing the bow around, sure. This time.

By: HiddenInput

HiddenInput — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:05:54 -0800

It looks like they are dumping the sand from the dredger upstream and into the already too shallow part of the channel. Seems like a reasonable place as the goal is to get the ship back into the regularly dredged part of the channel. They definitely aren't trying to fix the overall width of the navigable channel at this time.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:22:36 -0800

Nice roundup from Bellingcat

By: theory

theory — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:40:54 -0800

There is a lot of agriculture along the Suez, made possible by fresh water aqueducts from the Nile delta region. If you look at satellite imagery of the stuck ship location you can see irrigated land quite close by the west bank. So if there is any polluted sand dredged from the Suez, ideally it wouldn't be dumped on land right there. The aqueducts actually pass beneath the Suez at a few points to bring fresh water to the east bank too.

By: Ahmad Khani

Ahmad Khani — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:43:15 -0800

Some more analysis. Laleh Khalili, "Big ships were created to avoid relying on the Suez Canal. Ironically, a big ship is now blocking it" (WaPo)

By: grandiloquiet

grandiloquiet — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:05:38 -0800

Part of me is happy that other people are happy. I mean, it's not like any of our feelings one way or another are going to have much impact over unsticking the ship. But I have started worrying (from self-interest) about all the containers getting caught up in this mess and (from, uh, global self-interest) about all the extra fuel being used to go around the Cape of Good Hope. (And it's been pointed out that the crew of these ships are having a miserable time right now. )

By: anshuman

anshuman — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:25:00 -0800

Noting that the trip around Cape of Good Hope isn't just longer, it's more dangerous

By: Ahmad Khani

Ahmad Khani — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:30:09 -0800

Lexi Alexander الكسندرا ميراي @Lexialex Watching news on the Suez crisis in diff languages. The West is all jokes & market speculations. To hear about seafarers stuck after being away for a year, ships not carrying enough provisions, risks to the region due to rising oil & gas prices, you have to watch news in Arabic 5:07 AM · Mar 26, 2021·Twitter for iPhone 1,388 Retweets 63 Quote Tweets 4,354 Likes

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 15:00:58 -0800

Not sure what it means when the New York Times starts reporting on regional boating accidents but I guess it's a thing.

By: sjswitzer

sjswitzer — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 15:13:15 -0800

It means the nytimes is deeply committed to being unserious.

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 16:28:58 -0800

Watching news on the Suez crisis in diff languages. The West is all jokes & market speculations. To hear about seafarers stuck after being away for a year, ships not carrying enough provisions, risks to the region due to rising oil & gas prices, you have to watch news in Arabic Somewhat relatedly, this 2017 op-doc from the NYT that catalogs a day of shore-leave for some big ship sailors at the port of Felixstowe in England.

By: nubs

nubs — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 16:43:50 -0800

Now there are copycats. (And I know this is a serious situation, that there are a lot of negative impacts in a lot of different ways. I just can't resist making jokes).

By: mikelieman

mikelieman — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 17:50:38 -0800

...Or are they more like frequent-fueler miles? Just for being a member you get free WiFI and coffee, and when you fill up with at least 3 million gallons, a free shower, meal, or reserved parking spot.

By: oulipian

oulipian — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 19:28:19 -0800

Is there some kind of boat-signal we can shine in the sky to let Werner Herzog know we need his help? We might even get a Fitzcarraldo sequel out of it.

By: medusa

medusa — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 19:53:11 -0800

Big Boat is Stuck This is Big Boat. This is Big Boat's important job. Every day, Big Boat carries big boxes in the water to the other side of the world. Big Boat steers the boxes through huge waves and under giant bridges. She keeps the boxes safe through the scary seas. This is her work. Be sure to check out the illustrations and the comments.

By: vrakatar

vrakatar — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 21:14:15 -0800

This is what happens when people stop using old navigational tech. oh how i miss it. And is it still stuck?

By: the duck by the oboe

the duck by the oboe — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 21:36:48 -0800

Imagine being the captain of the first ship to pass through the Suez after it gets unblocked and knowing that you have the potential to do the funniest thing that anyone has ever done ever.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 00:54:00 -0800

There is a lot of agriculture along the Suez, made possible by fresh water aqueducts from the Nile delta region. Ah, the Romans again. Could well be that Marc Antony promised to have them built in return for a bit of snogging with Cleopatra.

By: Reverend John

Reverend John — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 07:33:56 -0800

And is it still stuck? Yep!

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 07:59:25 -0800

Suez Canal: Why is freeing the blocked ship so complicated? | DW News

By: ActionPopulated

ActionPopulated — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 08:01:40 -0800

Of course Chuck Tingle is on the case: I Freed this Handsome Cargo Ship from the Suez Canal and Now He's Stuck in my Butt.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 08:05:25 -0800

Captain who led the Costa Concordia salvage looks at the unfolding Suez Canal fiasco

By: glonous keming

glonous keming — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 08:22:30 -0800

> So we hit just 400 comments something something longboat

By: Carillon

Carillon — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 08:34:19 -0800

Ah, it's stuck, It's stuck you silly old fool, still you can not see That's a lovely canal lock that me mother sent to me Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more But a canal lock with containers on it I never saw before

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 10:09:28 -0800

something something longboat shipposting on the internet.

By: ob1quixote

ob1quixote — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 10:16:59 -0800

"Suez Canal Blocked : How Much Does It Really Cost And Who's Going To Pay?"—Chief MAKOi, 27 March 2021 Cf. "The Suez Canal Experience: Ship Transit Southbound | Seaman Vlog S03E13," Id., 21 November 2020

By: TWinbrook8

TWinbrook8 — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 10:30:09 -0800

Huh, I thought Captain Sloane was heading up the salvage effort but he's reporting from his home in South Africa.

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 12:32:59 -0800

Is there a back up for the Panama canal? Because it seems like we (the… globe? Not sure who) might want to fund a spare canal there too.

By: danapiper

danapiper — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 12:42:53 -0800

Really interesting breakdown of the AIS data including details on the collosal effort of the two ships behind Evergiven that somehow didn't hit her.

By: Huffy Puffy

Huffy Puffy — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 13:02:04 -0800

On the one hand, adding lanes to the Panama Canal is hard, because you have to go uphill and downhill so you have to build locks. On the other hand, Panama built an extra, wider lane (for a total of 3) that opened in 2016.

By: GCU Sweet and Full of Grace

GCU Sweet and Full of Grace — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 13:06:40 -0800

Is there a back up for the Panama canal? I was curious about this before! Most of the Panama Canal is a big lake. There are multiple locks at each end of Gatun Lake, an old pair and a new, larger pair. There's no backup for the narrow bits of the canal. They already have to schedule the narrow bits for one-way traffic because blah blah boat nonsense. It would cost many gerjillion dollars to blast new narrow bits out of the rock. The most likely backup to the Panama Canal would probably be one of the endless series of plans to build a canal across Nicaragua.

By: Too-Ticky

Too-Ticky — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 13:08:52 -0800

grandiloquiet: it's been pointed out that the crew of these ships are having a miserable time right now. And not just these ships. Because of COVID, many crews now have to work for much longer without being able to get off the ship for leasure time, and their trips often last a lot longer, so it takes longer until they get to see their families. Many of them are basically stuck on the ship. It's been a rotten year to work as a sailor and it's not over yet. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55802514

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 13:32:26 -0800

It would cost many gerjillion dollars to blast new narrow bits out of the rock. The blasting itself could be cheap or even free (to the Panama Canal Company) if they put up a sign "Test your new explosives here. Obtain licenses at the Panama DoD. Please clean up after you're done".

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 13:49:45 -0800

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/suez-canal-grounded-ever-given-cargo-ship-moves-17-metres-refloated-egypt-932726

The cargo ship that blocked the Suez canal and caused a backlog of vessels affecting global trade has reportedly been moved 17 metres to the north. It is hoped that the Ever Given, which is grounded in the canal, will move further as high tide hits at approximately 10pm Cairo time (8pm GMT). ...

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 13:52:07 -0800

like when you're trying to move a couch and you finally hear a squeak on the floor

By: TWinbrook8

TWinbrook8 — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 15:25:19 -0800

Smit, the salvage company battling to dislodge the ship that's blocking the Suez Canal said a crane will arrive at the location this weekend to begin the painstaking process of removing some of the vessel's cargo in a bid to help it refloat. ...Berdowski said a land crane would be brought in at the weekend which could lighten the Ever Given's load by removing containers, though experts have warned that such a process could be complex and lengthy. "If we don't succeed in getting it loose next week, we will have to remove some 600 containers from the bow to reduce the weight," he said. "That will set us back days at least, because where to leave all those containers will be quite a puzzle."

By: acb

acb — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 15:28:23 -0800

Previously, after a fashion,

By: showbiz_liz

showbiz_liz — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 15:54:41 -0800

"That will set us back days at least, because where to leave all those containers will be quite a puzzle." I'm sure there's a reason not to but, could they just stack them on the other end of the ship? I feel like that would make the whole process faster/more effective but I am not a boat surgeon

By: CrystalDave

CrystalDave — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:07:15 -0800

could they just stack them on the other end of the ship? Modern container ships are pretty carefully loaded for balance, center of gravity, etc. I believe the risk there would be worries about it capsizing/flipping over.

By: notoriety public

notoriety public — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:09:25 -0800

"That will set us back days at least, because where to leave all those containers will be quite a puzzle." Pretty sure if you line them up with no gaps they just disappear.

By: acb

acb — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:09:42 -0800

You can Towers-of-Hanoi them right back where they were after the ship is refloated.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:21:19 -0800

> Pretty sure if you line them up with no gaps they just disappear. The more experienced loading master person-in-charge (PIC)s start by eliminating the z-shaped and s-shaped containers, long before they try to slot in an 160 foot container.

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:41:00 -0800

At this rate the Ever Given will be the first container ship to reach level 36.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:42:28 -0800

I think high tide's come and gone, but the ship hasn't. Decent amount of details here: Ship blocking Suez Canal moves slightly, unclear when it will refloat March 28 2021 12:37 AM (local)

By: medusa

medusa — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:48:56 -0800

It's not brain surgery, but it is boat surgery.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:49:04 -0800

Sea Shanty Tiktok is producing new material about the situation.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 16:53:55 -0800

From what I've heard, they're also worried about breaking the ship, though I don't know whether moving the containers increases that risk.

By: subdee

subdee — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 20:06:42 -0800

What do you guys think, is this truck blocking the highway a real photo from yesterday? All I can find is posts on weibo and twitter, and like chinatimes who seem like they got the photo from weibo. It seems a little too on the nose. The comments on the China Times article are funny though, if it's for real and not a hoax: "First air, then land, but it'll be difficult to block the sky" XD. They also say it's an Evergreen container, but the truck operator would be a different company. China Times.

By: subdee

subdee — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 20:08:27 -0800

Another picture from social media, the bottom one seems like it's datestamped from 2014 so maybe some joker on weibo decided to dig up an old image...

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 23:37:43 -0800

I've since heard that there's also a worry that the ship could break on its own-- the tide flexes the ship, and bending metal back and forth can break it.

By: jeremias

jeremias — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 04:08:01 -0800

Once they free the ship, I wonder what they will do to prevent this from happening again? Can you imagine how horrible it would be if the very next ship to go through gets stuck?

By: rockindata

rockindata — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 04:28:56 -0800

Another reason they can't just stack containers on the other end of the ship is that the other end of the ship is over 1000 feet away, on the other side of the canal- and the other end is kinda stuck too.

By: whuppy

whuppy — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 04:30:42 -0800

Can you imagine how horrible it would be if the very next ship to go through gets stuck? The Story of Everest.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 05:47:07 -0800

Some more snippets of video from the refloating operation: Video from the bridge of one of the tugs pulling hopelessly at the stern a day or two ago. New sizzle reel from the Suez Canal Authority has footage from the cutter suction dredger working at the bow. Another video from one of the tugs showing them honking in chorus as they manage to move the ship slightly. It will be interesting what happens when they do shift it though, because it sounds like the bow got holed on its way up the bank. From gCaptain's summary of updates from the ship management company (BSM), on Friday: "Arrangements are also being made for high-capacity pumps to reduce the water levels in the forward void space of the vessel and the bow thruster room." Editor's Note: We reached out to BSM and they have confirmed some water ingress i.e. flooding, limited to those spaces. Remember that the bow is currently 20 feet up the slope from the level it should be floating at, so the flooding may get worse once it comes back down. And unless they dig out the entire forward end of the ship, whatever made those holes as it went up the bank, will still be there to make new ones as it comes back down again...

By: Glinn

Glinn — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 06:04:57 -0800

Can you imagine how horrible it would be if the very next ship to go through gets stuck? I thought I read that this ship is actually larger than is supposed to be allowed through the canal? If so, enforcing the size rule would be a good start.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 06:19:22 -0800

Glinn, there was a early claim that the ship was too big for the canal. This doesn't seem to be true. The most recent theory is that there was a temporary loss of power to the ship's steering, and some wind (the ships have such high sides they're like SUVs for wind, only ever so much more so) at the worst moment.

By: MonkeyToes

MonkeyToes — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 06:39:47 -0800

I wanted to make sure you have this Twitter thread from Marine Traffic: "We've seen a lot of very funny memes about the #EverGiven situation, so let's start a thread. Post your favourite memes below. "

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 07:07:19 -0800

The most recent theory is that there was a temporary loss of power to the ship's steering Not even that, but even a slight sideways drift towards the eastern bank could easily have caused some forward part of the hull to scrape the bottom of the canal (vide: cross-section diagram and the depth charts), which would be like your car's front right wheel to hit an (even minor) obstruction when driving on a slippery road: it will cause a forceful slew to the right. In this case there's 200 thousand tons at a speed of a couple of knots behind it, still pushing forward, so that slewing is impossible to stop before the bow seriously embeds itself in the eastern bank, while the stern slews left until it hits the western bank. Result: Ever Given quite thoroughly stuck, and with it a couple of hundred other vessels waiting to use the canal only somewhat less so.

By: anshuman

anshuman — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 07:15:31 -0800

Anyone know if the bow hole can be repaired from within? (I don't imagine it would be seaworthy, but enough to get it past the canal)?

By: theora55

theora55 — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 07:59:42 -0800

early claim that the ship was too big for the canal. This doesn't seem to be true Technically accurate, as the ship appears to fit in the actual canal, but may be so sensitive to wind as to be not actually navigable?

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 08:16:28 -0800

Anyone know if the bow hole can be repaired from within? One such fix would be to pressurise the breached compartment with air, basically blowing out the water until it's level with the leak. If that's on (or near) the bottom, you've regained almost all buoyancy.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 08:26:58 -0800

theora55, it would probably be more exact to say that the ship was permitted by the rules-- it wasn't something stupid like a driver trying to take a truck which wouldn't fit under a clearly marked bridge. There's going to be a lot of investigation into this accident, and for all I know, they'll revise the rules. The good news, such as it is, is that the Ever Given is one of the biggest ships in the world, so they might not need to exclude a lot of ships.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 08:32:46 -0800

Here's a video showing the ship's movements leading up to the grounding, which paints quite an interesting picture of how this happened. It's particularly interesting to watch the speed (marked as SOG - speed over ground - in the info box next to the ship). The official speed limit on the Suez canal is 14 km/h which is 7.6 knots. As the ship enters the canal it's already doing 8 knots and rising. There's a good reason to be keeping the speed high. When steering with a rudder, your steering force is directly related to speed through the water. You need to have enough speed to keep the ship controllable - this is called "steerage way", and it varies with conditions. On this morning, there's a howling wind blowing from the south. As the ship enters the canal travelling northeast, it's being blown dangerously close to the left side of the channel. The speed increases to 11 knots as they try to steer her back to starboard, into the centre of the canal. Then they come to a bend where the canal turns north. Taking that turn, they overcorrect to the left at first and end up well off to the left again. They then end up on a straight heading which takes them across the bend and through the centre of the channel again, but are late to turn again and end up well to the right of the channel at the start of the straight section of the canal going north. By this time, their speed is up to 13 knots. They try a couple of times to get the ship to come back to the left. Each time, she turns at first, but swings back and her course stays on the right side of the channel. The wind may have had a lot to do with this - it's still blowing from behind and will have been hitting the port side of the ship each time they tried to turn that way, straightening it out again. Then they try a third time, with a bit more rudder, and she finally starts moving across the channel - but they've overcorrected. She ends up dangerously close to the left side of the channel again, so they steer to the right - but they've overcorrected again and it's here that she runs aground. You can see the speed drop slightly as they try to slow her down, but the engines can only take off half a knot before she hits the shore at 12.5 knots and starts decelerating rapidly. I wouldn't want to draw premature conclusions about how this happened, but it looks a lot like it was simply not safe to operate this ship in these conditions. The speed necessary for her to maintain steerage way and controllability seems to have been in excess of what was safe and permitted in the canal.

By: rdr

rdr — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 08:36:24 -0800

The Ever Green is the exact maximum length permitted by the Canal authorities. That is entirely intentional. Lowering the maximum length would make a number of very expensive ships less useful.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 08:41:48 -0800

rdr, thank you. I was just going off of Al Jazeera saying that the Ever Given was one of the biggest ships in the world, and naively assuming there was a bell curve with just a few ships at the maximum size rather than there being rather a lot of ships that big because of a rule.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:03:57 -0800

> Here's a video showing the ship's movements leading up to the grounding, which paints quite an interesting picture of how this happened. Incidentally, that video resolves something I'd been wondering about for a couple days: Who was the last to make it through the Suez before the wreck. That ship's name is apparently the Cosco Galaxy, currently off the coast of Portugal near Cascais, and I'm betting that for a few days now the captain and crew have been feeling like the luckiest people on Earth.

By: Saxon Kane

Saxon Kane — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:08:35 -0800

Watching those tracking videos feels like watching a comedy version of The Wire Season 2

By: rdr

rdr — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:08:56 -0800

On that list of large container ships is the OOCL Japan at 399.9 meters, which has already gotten stuck in the Suez Canal twice, in June 2018 and October 2017. A cursory google search yielded: A 400 meter container ship grounded Another 400 meter ship grounded I don't know how often smaller vessels are grounded but to my naïve eyes it seems like there's a problem.

By: glonous keming

glonous keming — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:13:42 -0800

> it seems like there's a problem. Capitalism. It's always capitalism.

By: ChurchHatesTucker

ChurchHatesTucker — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:15:52 -0800

Here's a short video about the challenge of moving the Ever Given. (Though they don't address the additional complications of the flooding.)

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:31:53 -0800

"naively assuming there was a bell curve with just a few ships at the maximum size rather than there being rather a lot of ships that big because of a rule." This is true of just about every important shipping route. Even the comparatively minor Illinois Waterway (a 273-mile waterway, consisting primarily of the Illinois River and the Chicago San & Ship Canal, which connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, and thereby the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Gulf of Mexico) has a standard-largest-ship. The locks on the Illinois Waterway are built to the Ohio River standard, which is 110 feet wide by 600 feet long. Barges are therefore ~35 feet wide and 200 feet long (tows are usually 150ish). Going through the locks is time consuming (the one at Starved Rock in Utica IL takes about 30 minutes, so a double tow flotilla (which is typical) will take about 90 minutes to get through the locks. So shippers on EVERY major shipping lane want to maximize the amount of boat/cargo space they can put through a) locks; b) canals; and into c) ports, and they will ALL build up to the max size. (And the waterway maintainer will also dredge the navigable channel to EXACTLY the depth and width that the largest boats that can navigate the locks/canal require, and not one inch deeper.) My kids are obsessed with Panamax ships (the biggest ones that can go through the Panama Canal), so we have spent countless hours watching YouTube videos of Panamaxes in the canal. And we've gone on family trips to watch locks and dams along the Illinois River; it's pretty rare to see less-than-full-flotillas of barges go through the locks. (I mean, they do, and recreational boats hitch a ride in the empty barge space, but you don't see it a lot.)

By: thelonius

thelonius — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:39:00 -0800

"We've seen a lot of very funny memes about the #EverGiven situation..... Most of the ones I have seen sucked.

By: theora55

theora55 — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 10:00:43 -0800

Can the ships stuck behind Ever Given be towed/ navigated out of the canal?

By: ctmf

ctmf — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 10:01:52 -0800

That's a great analysis, automatronic. That may very well be what happened. I'm not a ship driver, but I have been the communications person for the pilot and the captain on the bridge many times. It sounds like a real conversation that would be happening up there. Although, if that WAS what was going on, most captains I know would be risk-averse enough to reject the passage until the wind was more favorable. Peacetime military though, so no financial incentive. it's still blowing from behind and will have been hitting the port side of the ship each time they tried to turn that way, straightening it out again. Again, not a big ship driver, but I'd expect that effect to only be a thing at very small angles. I would think there would be some tipping point where the wind catches you full on the side and tends to blow you downwind broadside like a leaf. Usually tracking dead downwind in a storm is not a thing you want to do if you can help it.

By: ctmf

ctmf — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 10:09:38 -0800

Checked it out, this page seems to confirm a stern wind can make the ship course-unstable, hence needing more speed. Not to turn, but to keep from uncommanded turns. It would be interesting to see if similar-sized ships had been experiencing course difficulty that same day.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 10:16:56 -0800

theora55: If you look at vesselfinder here you can see that the only vessels currently in this section of the canal are tugs, the dredging cutter and some other workhorses.

By: Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey

Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 10:23:24 -0800

"MV Ever Given: Why can't it be pulled out?" Some easy math for us non-math types.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 11:14:10 -0800

@ctmf - you have more knowledge of big ships than me, then. My experience is from steering ships of 50-200 tons or so. So I'm familiar with the dynamics of how these things work but at a different scale. When scaled down and sped up like in that video though, it all feels very familiar to me. About what happens with the wind astern - I guess it depends on how the windage is distributed fore and aft. With a lot of surface area forward, you'd tend to straighten out and stabilise on a downwind course; with more surface area astern, you'd be unstable as the wind would grab the stern and keep it turning. I'm used to having a bunch of masts and rigging up front, which probably responds quite differently to a flat slab like that ship. I think you're right that it's the unstable configuration in this case. Watching again, my guess is that on those first two attempts to get her to come left on the straight, they must have been bringing the rudder back to starboard after starting the turn to port, anticipating the wind grabbing the stern and trying to stop it getting out of hand. But on both those attempts, they fail to actually turn the ship as a result. Then they go a third time and let her go just a little further, and the wind grabs the stern and takes her hard over to port. After that, the outcome may have been inevitable - they were either going to hit the west bank as a result of that turn to port, or hit the east bank, as they did, once they got her going the other way. In a broader sense, this accident may have been inevitable as soon as they entered the canal. Once they were in, they couldn't slow down without losing steerage way, and they couldn't speed up without having too little room to maneuver safely. A marine version of coffin corner.

By: theora55

theora55 — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 11:55:05 -0800

Thanks, stoneshop. someone posted about the possibility of ships with livestock being stuck, so I'm glad that particular mess is probably avoided.

By: theora55

theora55 — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 11:56:08 -0800

The person who posted the first photo on Instagram has taken their account private. The person who posted the first photo on Instagram has lost a ton of copyright revenue.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 11:57:35 -0800

Some easy math for us non-math types. With a strong dose of incorrect assumptions and miscalculations, resulting in a wildly wrong number for the force (and from that the number of tugs) needed to pull the Ever Given out of the canal bank. If you consider an oblong box partly sitting partly on a table, you'll find it's easier to rotate the box by pushing or pulling the overhanging end than to pull straight in the direction of the longest dimension. Explaining this fully requires quite a bit of math and physics, but I expect you can see (and test) this being so. It wouldn't even be possible to pull the hapless ship straight out; they'll have to rotate it. And once it starts to rotate the profile of the canal bottom will help push the ship away from the shallower part of the canal. He also ignores that, while the entire ship weighs 200000 tons (and if that's 200000 cars, they would be very small ones by current standards) with about 1/3 stuck, that part is still getting lift from the displaced water, so the weight pressing down on the canal bottom is quite a bit less than the 60000 tons he's using in his calculations. And finally the frictional coefficient he uses (0.5) is for dry sand; even with a 5% water content it drops dramatically to 0.3, and gets close to 0.25 with 10% water content. So that's at least 40% less force required from that aspect alone.

By: theora55

theora55 — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 12:02:22 -0800

posting for the pictures. Satellite Images Show Just How Bad The Suez Canal Traffic Jam Is Becoming

By: Ahmad Khani

Ahmad Khani — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 12:45:39 -0800

Suez canal: Syria 'rations' fuel as efforts to free stuck ship fail.

Syrian authorities say they have begun rationing fuel as the blockage of the Suez canal stretched into a sixth day, delaying vital shipments and worsening the country's oil shortages. Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011 and faces a severe economic crisis. It had already announced a more than 50% rise in the price of petrol in mid-March.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 13:38:42 -0800

And about the force required to dislodge the Ever Given: Peter Berdowski. top executive at BosKalis (the parent company of Smit Salvage) and reporting that they now have a sea-going tug in place and another arriving tomorrow morning, "They have 400 tons of pulling power, significantly more than the 65 to 80 tons the currently used harbour tugs have. But this is about the maximum pulling force you can apply, else you're risking pulling the Ever Given apart.". This is someone whose job it is to know this stuff, in stark contrast with some random number-juggler on the Internet.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 17:27:40 -0800

Imgur: The good part of Ever Given is to compare all of the earth observation satellites

By: theora55

theora55 — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 18:26:31 -0800

Put Ever Given anywhere you want: https://evergiven-everywhere.glitch.me/

By: the duck by the oboe

the duck by the oboe — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 21:15:11 -0800

It's been refloated. Presumably there's a bit more work to do but that seems like a start.

By: alygator

alygator — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 22:24:05 -0800

For those who won't see it until the morning, when the answer may be a more definitive "no", I love that the status of stuck-ness has been updated to "Sort of?" and they are now differentiating between "very stuck" and "floating for a bit".

By: nubs

nubs — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 22:30:09 -0800

Sounds like it needs to be inspected before getting underway, which makes sense - you want to make sure its not too damaged.

By: drewbage1847

drewbage1847 — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 22:35:26 -0800

If there's any question about the ship's health, are they going to let it proceed forward or drag it backwards and out of the way for inspection/repairs and let other traffic go through?

By: Eyebrows McGee

Eyebrows McGee — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 22:56:58 -0800

You can tell I'm not a boat guy because it did not occur to me that the full moon would be an integral part of the plan: "The partial freeing of the vessel came after intensive efforts to push and pull the vessel with 10 tugboats when the full moon brought spring tide, raising the canal's water level and hopes for a breakthrough" -AP

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 00:13:48 -0800

are they going to let it proceed forward or drag it backwards Depends on the damage assessment. Back to Port Suez would be quickest, but the port itself is not deep enough (8 meters) to handle the Ever Given. Still, one of the port facilities is a floating dock for vessels up to 300000 tons, so if necessary it can be docked and inspected there. Port Said, at the other end, has a container terminal capable of unloading the Ever Given's cargo, or part of it, so that a couple of flooded compartments matter less and allowing it to proceed to a port with the required repair facilities. In both cases I'm certain the Ever Given will be under tow.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 02:32:21 -0800

Theora55: ships with livestock being stuck Actually, they're still stuck, just not in the canal itself, and it seems they hadn't even entered yet as the ones I was able to locate on vesselfinder are all outside Port Said, on the north end. But according to The Guardian they're being monitored: "Apart from goods, some 130,000 head of livestock on 11 ships sent from Romania have also been held up. Egypt has sent fodder and three teams of vets to examine livestock stuck at sea, some bound for Jordan."

By: anshuman

anshuman — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 04:33:10 -0800

If the ship is now pivoting, but the bow is still stuck ... how does that work? \_____ ?

By: TWinbrook8

TWinbrook8 — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 05:06:02 -0800

This illustration, although not to scale, makes it clearer. It looks like they could now haul it out from the stern.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 05:27:24 -0800

> This illustration, although not to scale, makes it clearer. It looks like they could now haul it out from the stern. (For those like me who just see the top of a very long Twitter thread, the relevant post becomes visible if you click the link, go back to this page, and then click the link again. This isn't TWinbrook8's fault, it's Twitter's.)

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 05:29:59 -0800

> If the ship is now pivoting, but the bow is still stuck ... how does that work? \_____ ? Dunno, but I'm guessing the important thing is that swinging the stern around frees up the deeper side of the canal and maybe can let some traffic through? I don't actually know how this works...

By: automatronic

automatronic — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 05:47:09 -0800

If the ship is now pivoting, but the bow is still stuck ... how does that work? \_____ ? It may be to do with the fact that the bow is reportedly pinned on top of a rock that it rode over on the way up, which would also explain why the ship is holed forward. If that's true, then now they've sucked all the sand out from under the bow, it may be sitting even harder on that rock. Pivoting and pulling at the ship might do further damage. Tricky situation. I doubt they'll let traffic past with the ship in place - it's way too close for comfort still - but at least they should now be able to get the tugs from one side to the other without them going around Africa!

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 05:48:49 -0800

let some traffic through? At least get they can now get tugs and other support vessels to move past the stern if need be. Regular traffic will likely be blocked until they're done freeing the ship, or when it's clear that that's going to take a good while longer, until they've determined the size of the passage, that they can safely continue working on freeing the Ever Given and that it's secured against moving due to currents from passing ships.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 06:26:29 -0800

Under an hour ago, Daily News Egypt tweeted: "#BREAKING: Ever Given vessel has swung back into #Suez Canal's banks because of high winds after it had been partially re-floated: Reuters"

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 06:32:57 -0800

However, the relevant Reuters article, last updated 30 minutes ago, says "The source said the ship's bow was afloat in the water despite its change of position, and that the vessel had not become regrounded."

By: double bubble

double bubble — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 06:34:27 -0800

I, for one, am riveted.

By: 1970s Antihero

1970s Antihero — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 06:40:00 -0800

BREAKING: the #EVERGIVEN is ON THE MOVE, headed northwards at around 3 knots (3.5mph).

By: wenestvedt

wenestvedt — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 06:57:23 -0800

Awwwwwwwwwww. :7(

By: TedW

TedW — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 06:58:21 -0800

istheshipstillstuck.com confirms that it is free!

By: dominik

dominik — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:06:21 -0800

Joyful tooting!

By: nubs

nubs — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:09:58 -0800

So it's free, but what about me? Perhaps this is a moment for all of us to check if we are wedged in our own metaphorical canals.

By: chavenet

chavenet — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:13:01 -0800

Now that Ever Given is free, you can try your own hand at piloting the Suez Canal

By: wenestvedt

wenestvedt — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:15:21 -0800

MetaFilter: Joyful tooting.

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:15:35 -0800

Well, kids, it was a good ride while it lasted. Let's go home.

By: acb

acb — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:24:10 -0800

Now that Ever Given is free, you can try your own hand at piloting the Suez Canal Desert ~~Bus~~ Boat.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:29:12 -0800

Perhaps this is a moment for all of us to check if we are wedged in our own metaphorical canals. For all of us that need a tug: Dildo's en vibrators zitten vast voor Suezkanaal: erotiekgroothandel EDC lijdt miljoenenverlies

By: Too-Ticky

Too-Ticky — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:52:06 -0800

nubs: So it's free, but what about me? Did you order a melamine butter dish, too?

By: anshuman

anshuman — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:54:55 -0800

Forever forgiven.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 07:55:00 -0800

Those dredges really suck.

By: BWA

BWA — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:13:58 -0800

There is a lot of agriculture along the Suez, made possible by fresh water aqueducts from the Nile delta region. Ah, the Romans again. Could well be that Marc Antony promised to have them built in return for a bit of snogging with Cleopatra. Wet blanket pedant alert. Egyptians had fresh water aqueducts long before MA or Cleo or the Ptolemies. Is there a back up for the Panama canal? As alluded to above, people have been thinking about it. The so-called Nicaragua Canal came a cropper a few years ago. Modern plans are not so much a back up as an improved alternative. Problem with Panama is that the Panama canal is limited to ships of a much smaller capacity than is the Suez. See above link for details

By: inflatablekiwi

inflatablekiwi — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:20:14 -0800

Is the feeling of being an empty nester?

By: TWinbrook8

TWinbrook8 — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:39:59 -0800

Well, with global warming, the Northwest Passage comes into play...

By: zeptoweasel

zeptoweasel — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:41:32 -0800

Position update: the ship is 1.6 nm north of her stuck position...and still moving! That's awfully precise! (Oh, "nautical miles".)

By: Teegeeack AV Club Secretary

Teegeeack AV Club Secretary — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:41:45 -0800

The Ever Given may be free, but she will always be stuck in our hearts.

By: gwint

gwint — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:47:17 -0800

So the ship is escaping Egypt on the second night of Passover? Pretty good writers, pretty good.

By: DanSachs

DanSachs — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 08:57:58 -0800

Ever Given set course for Rotterdam after six-day Suez blockade ends.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:02:59 -0800

They don't sound too concerned about her having taken on water, then.

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:05:51 -0800

Let's get something stuck somewhere else.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:14:50 -0800

AIS shows that the ship has now reached the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the canal, so they should be able to start traffic moving past her now. Thank you to everyone who joined in the rubbernecking on this thread. It's been a fun few days.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:16:54 -0800

Soundtrack for this end of the thread

By: double bubble

double bubble — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:20:23 -0800

I fully understand that this was a big deal for a lot of people and not in a good way, but many of us also needed a diversion from the slow moving heartache of the last year and I will be forever grateful to the Ever Given for knocking me out of my funk.

By: aniola

aniola — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:23:35 -0800

Some bicycles are stuck.

By: Tehhund

Tehhund — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 09:55:30 -0800

Soundtrack for this end of the thread I was expecting this but yours is good too. Let's not forget the real heroes of the story: MetaFilter commenters, whose tireless efforts got us to the 400 comment mark so the ship could move again. Good work everyone!

By: sjswitzer

sjswitzer — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 10:15:38 -0800

you can try your own hand at piloting the Suez Canal. That's really well done. And it's really really hard not to overcorrect! (Years ago a friend wrote a very elegant physics-based wireframe-graphics flight simulator in, like 1000 lines of C. I tried to write an autopilot for it before knowing about "PID controllers" and inevitably it would overcorrect, swinging wildly up and down before passing through the ground plane, so to speak. Anyway, the feeling was very familiar.)

By: sjswitzer

sjswitzer — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 10:29:15 -0800

Interestingly PID controllers were initially developed for ship autopilots by observing experienced helmsmen.

By: kitten kaboodle

kitten kaboodle — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 11:26:09 -0800

double bubble, I feel exactly the same way. Like, I know this has serious repurcussions for a lot of people, but this has been the first time I've been obsessively glued to the interwebs for something that wasn't abject horror in an awfully long time.

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:01:50 -0800

so they should be able to start traffic moving past her now. Vesselfinder shows the Bitter Lakes now emptying, with the livestock-carrying Omega Star, Unimar and Sea Star as 6th, 7th and 8th.

By: Iris Gambol

Iris Gambol — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:36:42 -0800

More than 40 vessels that were anchored at the Great Bitter Lake waiting for the Ever Given to be freed have resumed their southbound journey through the waterway, according to canal services firm Leth Agencies. Over 30 southbound vessels anchored off the Mediterranean city of Port Said are expected to enter the canal, it added. [...] At least 367 vessels, carrying everything from crude oil to cattle, are backed up as they wait to traverse the canal. Dozens of others have taken the long, alternate route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip — a 5,000-kilometer (3,100-mile) detour that costs ships hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel and other costs. (AP) Egypt's lost nearly $100 million in toll revenues since the 3/23 enstuckening, and it may be another week and a half until traffic's back on schedule.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 14:44:21 -0800

> i wanted to make a joke about the boat but it looks like that ship has sailed

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 14:56:27 -0800

I'm sure you can wedge one in somehow. My faith in you remains unsinkable.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:16:46 -0800

*gives a stern look*

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:17:38 -0800

*bows*

By: anshuman

anshuman — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:31:04 -0800

Well done. For those who want moor ...

By: Tehhund

Tehhund — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:31:07 -0800

Now this thread is rudderless.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:37:20 -0800

*winches*

By: Multicellular Exothermic

Multicellular Exothermic — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 16:30:00 -0800

Capstan, oh my capstan...

By: bendy

bendy — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 16:56:42 -0800

> Z I require a tug. W I require a hug. Too late?

By: myotahapea

myotahapea — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 23:36:42 -0800

So ... does everything just go back to normal now? At least one report I read stated that something like 30,000 cubic metres of canal-stuff were dredged out from round the ship to get it re-floated. Seems the Ever Given is being inspected for seaworthiness after being relocated to somewhere it's no longer blocking traffic, but with so much of the canal wall/floor having been displaced doesn't this increase the risk of something like this happening again? I'm sure Egypt is eager to start reclaiming all those transit fees but wouldn't they be massively increasing their liability by letting ships through before someone has rubber-stamped the safety of the infrastructure?

By: nat

nat — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:54:02 -0800

I don't know anything about a long term plan to inspect the area where the Ever Given impacted the canal banks. But I do know that Vesselfinder.com shows a healthy amount of traffic transiting the canal at the moment. It's sort of mesmerizing to watch.

By: thelonius

thelonius — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 02:47:58 -0800

It's sort of mesmerizing to watch. Scrolling out is kind of disturbing. Claustrophobia-inducing. The planet looks infested with ships.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 05:01:06 -0800

Link. Available now-- I don't know whether there will be a paywall. In any case, a lot of explanation of how container ships have gotten a *lot* wider, and how that interacts with water that doesn't have room to get out of the way. Shallow water hydrodynamics aren't like deep sea hydrodynamics.

By: ob1quixote

ob1quixote — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 06:26:23 -0800

"Ship's owner to handle Suez Canal blockage in line with int'l law," Kyodo News, 30 March 2021

By: automatronic

automatronic — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 07:49:28 -0800

CNN have made an interactive game where you steer the ship through the canal. It's a bit simplistic, and in particular it doesn't simulate the stern wind effects that seem to have factored into this accident, but it does give some feel of what it's like to handle a ship in a confined space.

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 08:06:22 -0800

We need a mashup of the CNN game with the evergiven-everywhere site, so you can take the Ever Given out for a spin around your neighborhood, maybe pick up some groceries.

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:48:44 -0800

Just as a sense of scale thing, if you live in Toronto, the Ever Given is about the size of Eaton Centre. The whole mall, the whole thing, from Dundas to Queen.

By: automatronic

automatronic — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:53:27 -0800

For anyone having trouble letting go of the excitement of this event, an 80m ship is now stuck across the River Arun in Littlehampton, on the south coast of England.

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 13:03:00 -0800

It's happening everywhere!

By: Greg_Ace

Greg_Ace — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 20:59:55 -0800

How am I only after the fact learning of Top Gear/Ever Given memes!? How did I not predict them from the get-go!?!?

By: sebastienbailard

sebastienbailard — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 06:15:54 -0800

New ship designs mean new challenges for Suez Canal.

By: Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey

Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 10:01:29 -0800

The Suez Canal is so important on the global stage, the US once considered using FIVE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY NUCLEAR BOMBS to excavate an alternative to Suez over on the Israeli border. That's how much they wanted not to have to rely on Suez.

By: wierdo

wierdo — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 11:00:27 -0800

In the context of the time that isn't really all that remarkable. It sounds like "holy shit, they were willing to use that many bombs?!" to us, but when you have the enormous industrial capacity required for series production of nuclear weapons at the scale the US and USSR had back then the incremental cost of the relatively small bombs they envisioned for that sort of use is pretty small in comparison. There's a reason they were looking at using bombs to do everything from widening the Panama Canal to digging harbors in Alaska to fracking gas fields to using residual heat from underground explosions to generate steam for electrical generation once the availability of fissile material ceased being a concern. It does seem only slightly less insane than leaded gas in retrospect, though.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 11:58:43 -0800

i miss big boat stuck

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 11:59:54 -0800

Josh please come back to the podcast!

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 12:03:18 -0800

but big boat

By: Going To Maine

Going To Maine — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 12:07:48 -0800

Remain here, with boat

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 12:19:50 -0800

still not over!

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 13:07:51 -0800

(stops truck, turns on hazard lights, films mama jessamyn gently picking up little cortex by scruff of neck with teeth)

By: Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey

Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 15:37:09 -0800

China's insane plan to build a canal across Nicaragua (including the largest source of fresh water for 47 million people in Central America.)

China's insane plan tyo build a canal across the Balkans

By: alygator

alygator — Sun, 04 Apr 2021 10:59:16 -0800

It's not her fault.

By: ctmf

ctmf — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 18:32:09 -0800

Wonder when the VDR data will be available. "The information recorded in the unit(s) (sometimes also called the ship's black box) may include the following information: [...] Audio from the bridge, including bridge wings"

By: interogative mood

interogative mood — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 19:05:44 -0800

Latest update the ship is sitting in the lake in the canal. Egypt is demanding a billion dollars before they will it leave.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 23:55:48 -0800

there's more than one way to stuck a boat

By: Stoneshop

Stoneshop — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 00:26:35 -0800

Some time last week I came across a picture showing a slot-car racetrack, which, scaled up somewhat, would be a perfect solution to ships keeping course in the canal: - a narrow trench should be cut out in the bottom of the width-restricted sections. - ships over a certain size will get handed a guiding slider to be attached to their bow on entering the canal; frequent users could have this slider permanently installed if they like. - on entering such a width-restricted section the slider gets lowered into the slot, guiding the bow, which keeps the ship neatly centered over the trench.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 08:34:31 -0800

a slot-car racetrack, which, scaled up somewhat, would be a perfect solution * There would be cross-overs at certain points in the canal, adding an air of excitement to a pretty mundane transit * Corners would be extra wide to allow the stern of the ship to "drift" when going around full throttle * The website suez.canal.game would allow premium members a chance to virtually squeeze the controller for each ship, with racing leagues and bracket elimination

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 08:41:31 -0800

* Every now and then somebody would recklessly leave the controller mashed all the way in, and a giant container ship would leap right out of the canal on a bend and skitter upside down all the way across Egypt before pitching up in an inaccessible corner under the piano

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 09:11:19 -0800

Twitch Plays Suez Canal

By: jquinby

jquinby — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 09:37:33 -0800

What if QWOP, but big boat

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 14:02:51 -0800

I can absolutely imagine Bennett Foddy putting out a maritime commerce hellgame.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 17:09:10 -0800

The slot car thing is overly complicated. The real problem is the canal is too big. They never have this problem on the Corinth Canal. The solution is obvious: bumpers ala bumper bowling.

By: ob1quixote

ob1quixote — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 07:26:23 -0800

"Evergreen Ship "Ever Given" Arrested Amid $916 Million Claim For Suez Canal Blockage"—Chief MAKOi, 17 April 2021

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 02:28:13 -0800

you say arrested, I say stuck

By: evidenceofabsence

evidenceofabsence — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:38:16 -0800

a slot-car racetrack, which, scaled up somewhat, would be a perfect solution *Loop-de-loop

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 05:42:30 -0800

Bennett Foddy ... maritime commerce hellgame 13 ships dotted around in Red Sea, all running at full power all the time, random wind squalls, each ship has two alphabetically adjacent keys assigned for rudder left and rudder right, realistic ship physics, any collision resets game to starting position. Aim is to get all ships through entire length of Suez canal and into the Med. Make it so.

By: ob1quixote

ob1quixote — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:18:22 -0800

"What Really Happened at the Suez Canal?"—Practical Engineering, 20 April 2021