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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

#471

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

test1235 wrote: post #208
dkarl wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smartest ones are maybe not the ones providing suggestions? Then again, it's fun to speculate, and what are these threads for if not to provoke thought? Maybe it's fine for people to imagine and try to put themselves in the place of the professionals working on the problem. You can interpret the comments here as an indicator of dangerous human hubris if you want, but I think most of the people here understand tha…

some of the suggestions seemed borderline condescending e.g. "why don't they just do X" as tho' the actual experienced engineers working over there on the problem couldn't come up with better ideas than some guy who happens to spend a lot of their day on the internet.

"Why don't they just do X" has two interpretations:

1. "This is such a simple solution and I think they're dumb for not doing it."

2. "X seems like a great and obvious idea, but they aren't doing it. Therefore, there must be something they know but I don't, and I'm interested in learning it."

I try to take the second interpretation whenever I see someone posing solutions in that manner.

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

#472

Post by Synaesthesia »

pradn wrote: post #207

A great Twitter thread with many articles/resources if you want a critical lens at the global logistics supply chain. https://twitter.com/CharmaineSChua/status/137586855212986368... I found this article on the impact on super-sized ships on logistical infrastructure useful and fascinating. It describes how the creation of ships too big to fit in the Panama canal (post-PANAMAX ships) was received by 1) Panamanians 2)…

The Suez canal has also increased in size over time, it's cross sectional area has steadily increased.

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

#473

Post by dzhiurgis »

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…

From what I heard they’ve suffered a blackout which is an event when your power goes out.

Friends scientific boat had a same thing in Kiel canal, but only 22 meter boat and under and hour.

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

#474

Post by gt565k »

throwawayfire wrote: post #355
chipsambos wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree it's incalculable, I don't mean that in the "it's too big of a number" sort of way but in the "we can't possibly know" kind of way: 1) The scale and depth of the disruption makes it impractical to figure in any kind of accurate way and 2) The disruption will have introduced hypotheticals that nay spiral out themselves (butterfly effect style) e.g. some retailer may have lost a customer who went elsewhere, some…

> 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 happened with the bridge collapse on I-85 in Atlanta [1]

I used to take the access road parallel to the bridge and avoid a lot of traffic that was south bound. When the bridge collapsed and I-85 was blocked off, everyone learned about the parallel access road, and it now became a cluster of a traffic hot zone too.

Prior to that, a lot of people were not aware of the alternate route.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse

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

#475

Post by InitialLastName »

onei wrote: post #449
InitialLastName wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the alternative proposal was a canal through the ~3rd most violent region on the planet.

Absolutely, I imagine the insurance alone would make the Persian Gulf route unviable. Pirates is one thing, but governments confiscating boats would be a huge disincentive. The other side of the Sinai is probably much more palatable even if Egypt and Israel aren't best buddies.

Not to mention the terrorism/sabotage/non-state actor destruction opportunities that route would present that are moderately prevented on the Red Sea side (if you can get past the Horn of Africa).

I can't see Egypt approving an alternate canal that Israel would have any control over, but I could absolutely see Israel going in on a chance to a) take business from Egypt and b) add a defensive feature along that border.

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

#476

Post by dmalvarado »

thisisbrians wrote: post #342
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.

They built a computer model to try and manage the stress on the ship as they worked to free it. It was not straightforward as the ship could have broken if they weren't extremely careful. They also had divers inspecting the hull for signs of stress. This was a massive, complex operation.

Can you image if the hull did weaken to the point of near failure? They might have needed to offload everything right there where it ran aground, lest it completely fail uncontrolled. The canal would be closed for a very long time. Luckily they didn't have to make that call.

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

#477

Post by artursapek »

unixhero wrote: post #27
navbaker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it turns out to be human error related, how much liability falls on the actual ship's captain versus the required canal pilot?

It does not work like that on the seas. Maritime legal conventions are are ratified by 99% countries on the globe. A shipowner is alwayd insured against these things, and the i surance company is also insured (reinsurance). So nobody will end up in a lifetime of serfdom because of this. Shit hits the fan on the high seas all the time. We nornally don't hear about it in regular media.

TIL about insurance insurance

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

#478

Post by OscarCunningham »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #455
OscarCunningham wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The subject was predicting the cost of the boat getting stuck by comparing to the known cost to Egypt. The moral aspects of the water situation don't transfer across the analogy unless you also think that Egypt are charging less than they could because they think they have a moral obligation to shipping companies.

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

#479

Post by thisisbrians »

dmalvarado wrote: post #476
thisisbrians wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They built a computer model to try and manage the stress on the ship as they worked to free it. It was not straightforward as the ship could have broken if they weren't extremely careful. They also had divers inspecting the hull for signs of stress. This was a massive, complex operation.

Can you image if the hull did weaken to the point of near failure? They might have needed to offload everything right there where it ran aground, lest it completely fail uncontrolled. The canal would be closed for a very long time. Luckily they didn't have to make that call.

Luckily, indeed — but they were already planning for this contingency. Apparently (and unsurprisingly) it was going to be hard to find a large enough crane to move the containers.

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

#480

Post by amenghra »

EricE wrote: post #222
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.

High tide did more than anything. If it had gone beyond Wednesday they likely would have been screwed as the high tide was set to start dropping each day after Tuesday. Good thing they started dredging right away.

But there are two high tides and two low tides a day. Why did it take a week? /s
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