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Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

reuters.com

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Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#451

Post by DangerousPie »

superjan wrote: post #413
exikyut wrote: post #90

Oh hey, they fixed it, - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship - without taking multiple weeks - without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.

What I wonder about: how is such a rescue contract negotiated? There is likely willingness to pay, but it is difficult to judge what a reasonable price is, and it may not even be clear who is culpable in advance. Do they have contracts in advance with the shipping companies?

I would assume that Egypt paid. They have by far the biggest incentive to clear the canal asap. They will presumably now enter a lengthy legal dispute to try and get their money back from the shipping company.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#452

Post by piyh »

sidpatil wrote: post #429
throwawayfire wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals In general, temporary disruption has some long-term positive economic effects (which is directly why 'disruption' is valued in Silicon Valley). For example, during London Tube Strikes, commuters find different and more efficient routes and 5% ended up permanently changing their route on public transport: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tube-strike..…

This reminds me of annealing, and why it's implemented as a technique for finding optima.

I'm not blocking the canal, I'm testing robustness!

Also in the big picture with covid not being as deadly as it could have been, could serve as a nice dress rehearsal for a captain trips.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#453

Post by lmilcin »

dan-robertson wrote: post #333
munificent wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like they just got unexpectedly lucky, but all mariners are well aware of and take tides into account in their planning.

I’d be surprised if they aimed for their ship to arrive n days before the spring tide in case it got stuck. That just doesn’t sound like an efficient operation. In this case the luck was that the high tides were relatively high when it was stuck. If we were in a neap tide, we might have had to wait longer for a high enough tide to get the ship out. (But maybe if tides were lower it wouldn’t have gotten so stuck) P.S.…

That's not what he said.

Ship captains who sail on open ocean are well aware of tides. It is not too difficult to imagine somebody did 2+2 and figured out the tides are getting higher so in couple of days there is going to be better chance of freeing it.

Obviously they did not plan it. It is just an opportunity they used.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#454

Post by Sebb767 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #154
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the cargo part - it's entirely possible that some cargo is non-viable. It is going to be onboard days longer than predicted. Anything even faintly perishable may be degraded. But good news for sure!

It's already a trip halfway around the world at something like 30 km/h. If you're transporting goods that are that sensitive, you're likely doing it by air already. Ships get delayed all the time for various reasons.

> It's already a trip halfway around the world at something like 30 km/h

This sounds slow at first, but, since you can drive pretty much 24/7, that's still 720km per day. If you're literally going halfway around the world (20.000km), you'll be there in 28 days. Since you drive on water, you'll do few small detours (I assume), so you can actually get those 700km a day.

EUChina even appears to be "only" 7000 km [0], so if you could drive in a straight line you could get there in 10 days. 14 with usual delays and detours, maybe. That's a reasonable time span for a lot of perishable goods. With the blockage doubling that time, I can easily see how this would affect quite a few goods.

[0] https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from/Europe/to/China

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#455

Post by wizzwizz4 »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #398
Taek wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. I pay only $1 a day for water, but if you stop giving me water for 7 days the damages are going to be a lot more than $7. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to charge me more than $1 per day for water. Obviously an extreme example, but the situation with this ship is likely similar. The damages probably far exceed the $15m/day in revenue (though I suspect they are far lower than $7b per day).

The reason water is cheap is because it's plentiful; there's a lot of competition to supply it. But there's only one Suez canal and sailing around Africa is much worse. So you would expect Egypt to be extracting a significant portion of the value the Suez canal adds.

So… if somebody gets a monopoly on the water supply to an area, you think a price hike is reasonable?

Oh, wait, water's already a monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#456

Post by afterburner »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #169
leoh wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There appears to be little "high-end engineering." Just a high tide and a bunch of tug boats.

High end engineering uses the simplest and most cost effective solution to get the job done right. It would have been a mistake to throw expensive, complicated solutions at a problem that had a relatively simple solution.

So just "engineering" then

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#457

Post by lmilcin »

JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote: post #352
exikyut wrote: post #90

Oh hey, they fixed it, - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo - without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship - without taking multiple weeks - without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.

Why wouldn't it be more cost-effective or unreasonable to destroy the ship?

Have you ever tried to cut tires of the car that blocked your driveway? Did it help to clear the blockage faster or exactly the opposite?

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#458

Post by cwhiz »

krisoft wrote: post #268
cwhiz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it wasn't fun. It's that the media goes into absurd hyperbole on every subject. This boat was going to be stuck for weeks, and maybe forever! ...and now they'll shift to absurd hyperbole on some other topic that is potentially more damaging.

The company tasked to salvage the ship said that they will use dredgers and tugs and will try to pull the ship free. They also said that if that doesn't work they will have to lighten the ship, which can take weeks. After that it was entirely fair and true to report that "it might take weeks to get the ship unstuck." Just because we got lucky and the simpler, faster, plan worked doesn't make such reporting hyperbolic…

The company said they could have it out within days, or it could take weeks. So what do media organizations report?

"Suez Canal could be blocked for weeks."

Always err on the side of hyperbole and extreme negativity.

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#459

Post by lmilcin »

Now, understand all those ships will take a long time to pass the canal and then even longer time processing at their ports of destination which will also have their schedules completely disrupted.

Does anybody know at what percentage of capacity the canal usually operates?

Re: Suez Canal says traffic in channel resumes after stranded ship refloated

#460

Post by Gh0stRAT »

adrianmonk wrote: post #404
riverageraldo wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me question that shouldn't we have another canal built? Like if so much of the world's economy depends on this route shouldn't we build an extra canal to speed up the transportation and also act as a redundancy

I'm a layman, but it seems like there are probably other preventative measures that are way cheaper. A Bloomberg article ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-27/how-a-des... ) says the speed limit was 7.6 to 8.6 knots but the Ever Given was traveling at 13.5 knots. So maybe they need to start enforcing that limit. Reportedly this was during high winds, so they could also reduce the speed limit even furth…

The slower the boat travels, the closer to the wind it has to point in order to avoid being pushed into the leeward shore. (assuming it doesn't have significant thrust-vectoring capabilities at both the bow and the stern which as far as I can tell seems to be the case for large cargo ships)

Because the boat is longer than the canal is wide, for any nonzero perpendicular wind speed there is a minimum boat speed below which it would not be able to avoid running aground. The solution is to either not permit such large ships to transit the canal during high wind events or to send them with enough tugboats to counteract the force of the wind.

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