Arminius
Well-Known Member
- Oct 30, 2019
- 1,068
- Boat Info
- Bowrider 200 Select, 2003
- Engines
- 5.0L MPI, 260 hp w/Alpha 1 Drive
3/20/21, NY Times reports regarding the container ship wedged in the Suez Canal:
"But not until the seventh day, after the confluence of the full moon and the sun conjured an unusually high tide, did the ship wriggle free with one last heave shortly after 3 p.m., allowing the first of the nearly 400 ships waiting to resume their journeys by Monday evening.
How it happened will be the province of teams of inspectors and investigators who were set to begin work after the now-unstuck container ship, the Ever Given, motored under its own power Monday evening into the Great Bitter Lake, north of where it had been marooned since running aground amid a sandstorm last Tuesday morning.
Because the ship sails under a Panamanian flag, Panama will handle the investigation unless Egypt exercises its right to take over, though international pressure for a more thorough accounting could result in the United States National Transportation Safety Board stepping in, said Capt. John Konrad, who founded gCaptain.com, a maritime news site.
The Egyptians have already reached one conclusion, investigation or no.
“The Suez Canal is not at fault,” Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, the head of the canal authority, said at a news conference on Monday night. “We have been harmed by the incident.”
Early on, the ship’s owner and operator blamed the wind, and maritime experts agreed that it had been a factor, perhaps the deciding one, as gusts pushed against the vertical wall of containers piled high atop the Ever Given as though against a sail. But General Rabie also suggested over the weekend that human or technical error may have come into play.
Under standard procedures, two Egyptian canal pilots would have boarded the ship before it entered the canal to help it navigate, experts said, though the ship’s captain would have retained final authority.
A reconstruction of the ship’s movements through the narrow section of the canal north of the port of Suez shows the Ever Given weaving back and forth from one side of the canal to the other almost as soon as it entered the channel, gathering speed until the 224,000-ton ship tops 13 knots, or about 15 miles per hour.
While it is not yet known what caused the Ever Given to start bouncing around the waterway, once it did, it succumbed to what is known in seafaring as the bank effect. That is a phenomenon in which the stern of a ship tends to swing toward one bank while its bow is pushed away from it, said Capt. Paul Foran, a maritime consultant who as a ship’s captain navigated the Suez Canal 18 times.
Captain Foran said that whoever was giving orders most likely tried to regain control over the ship by putting on speed. But that decision would have made matters worse, robbing the crew of its usual maneuvering tools. Bow thrusters that could push the bow left or right stop working at high speeds; the faster a ship goes, the lower the pressure beneath the hull, sinking the vessel dangerously low in the water.
“The faster you go, the less control you have,” he said, “and on a ship that size, once she gets out of control like that, it gets even more difficult to bring her under control.”
Investigators will use audio from the ship’s voice recorder and tracking data to piece together what combination of commands, and by whom, spelled ruin. But the result was clear: a ship the length of four football fields, wedged diagonally across a vital canal much narrower than four football fields, at a time when global shipping could ill afford further disruption after a year of havoc brought on by the pandemic."
"But not until the seventh day, after the confluence of the full moon and the sun conjured an unusually high tide, did the ship wriggle free with one last heave shortly after 3 p.m., allowing the first of the nearly 400 ships waiting to resume their journeys by Monday evening.
How it happened will be the province of teams of inspectors and investigators who were set to begin work after the now-unstuck container ship, the Ever Given, motored under its own power Monday evening into the Great Bitter Lake, north of where it had been marooned since running aground amid a sandstorm last Tuesday morning.
Because the ship sails under a Panamanian flag, Panama will handle the investigation unless Egypt exercises its right to take over, though international pressure for a more thorough accounting could result in the United States National Transportation Safety Board stepping in, said Capt. John Konrad, who founded gCaptain.com, a maritime news site.
The Egyptians have already reached one conclusion, investigation or no.
“The Suez Canal is not at fault,” Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, the head of the canal authority, said at a news conference on Monday night. “We have been harmed by the incident.”
Early on, the ship’s owner and operator blamed the wind, and maritime experts agreed that it had been a factor, perhaps the deciding one, as gusts pushed against the vertical wall of containers piled high atop the Ever Given as though against a sail. But General Rabie also suggested over the weekend that human or technical error may have come into play.
Under standard procedures, two Egyptian canal pilots would have boarded the ship before it entered the canal to help it navigate, experts said, though the ship’s captain would have retained final authority.
A reconstruction of the ship’s movements through the narrow section of the canal north of the port of Suez shows the Ever Given weaving back and forth from one side of the canal to the other almost as soon as it entered the channel, gathering speed until the 224,000-ton ship tops 13 knots, or about 15 miles per hour.
While it is not yet known what caused the Ever Given to start bouncing around the waterway, once it did, it succumbed to what is known in seafaring as the bank effect. That is a phenomenon in which the stern of a ship tends to swing toward one bank while its bow is pushed away from it, said Capt. Paul Foran, a maritime consultant who as a ship’s captain navigated the Suez Canal 18 times.
Captain Foran said that whoever was giving orders most likely tried to regain control over the ship by putting on speed. But that decision would have made matters worse, robbing the crew of its usual maneuvering tools. Bow thrusters that could push the bow left or right stop working at high speeds; the faster a ship goes, the lower the pressure beneath the hull, sinking the vessel dangerously low in the water.
“The faster you go, the less control you have,” he said, “and on a ship that size, once she gets out of control like that, it gets even more difficult to bring her under control.”
Investigators will use audio from the ship’s voice recorder and tracking data to piece together what combination of commands, and by whom, spelled ruin. But the result was clear: a ship the length of four football fields, wedged diagonally across a vital canal much narrower than four football fields, at a time when global shipping could ill afford further disruption after a year of havoc brought on by the pandemic."
