[HN Gopher] Suez canal blocked by a massive ship
___________________________________________________________________
Suez canal blocked by a massive ship
Author : tilolebo
Score : 959 points
Date : 2021-03-23 20:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| yosito wrote:
| Does anyone have some insight on how this could affect global
| supply chains, depending on how long the canal is blocked? It
| seems like it's been blocked for a day or so, and there's already
| a pretty big queue. I'd imagine that has to have some significant
| impacts already.
| mattashii wrote:
| Global trade will probably only be significantly impacted if
| the canal stays blocked for more than 2 weeks, which is when it
| starts to become a reasonable option (time-wise) to go south
| instead and round the cape. A backlog of ships on both sides
| will start to be really significant after 4 days of blocking,
| with longer blockade implying ports increasingly further down
| the routes being impacted as well. Currently, the worst that
| probably is happening is that the local logistics sector
| (train, truck, etc.) is in re-booking hell to handle the
| suddenly delayed ships.
|
| src: I work at a container-logistics software company, and
| we've handled and seen similar situations (sudden loss of a
| main class of transport for a few days).
| sabas_ge wrote:
| Add to the fact that we had equipment shortage for a while
| these months (hi from a shipping agency)...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yep. Operationally, things like that are interesting. Global
| as a whole usually recovers pretty well. Might drive
| container and shipping rates a tad more so.
|
| Truck and train will probably see an increase as well on the
| China-Europe route if it takes too long.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I don't think this will impact. There is already a lot of
| possibility of delays, for example ships taking detours due to
| bad weather systems, etc. Nobody plans success of their
| production based on the ship arriving on exact day.
| tilolebo wrote:
| https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374836312860151808?...
|
| As of 2330 (GMT+2) M/V EVER GIVEN, no. 5 in the 23rd of March NB
| convoy remains #grounded in the #SuezCanal.
|
| Vessel no. 6, 7 & 8 will be assisted by tugs back to Suez
| anchorage area, clearing space for M/V EVER GIVEN to be towed out
| the same way as she entered once re-floated.
| https://t.co/ltXEyRZtqX
|
| Looks like it's going to take a while...
| tilolebo wrote:
| Re-floating operation has been temporarily suspended and will
| resume Thursday morning.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Can anybody speak as to why they are able to get the ship no
| longer stuck horizontal, but still need to drag it out the
| way it came? Why can't it just go forward on the path it was
| headed on?
| oliv__ wrote:
| Tengential but I am always curious what software these huge
| logistics company use to manage their business. From my
| outsider's perspective, it seems like a best-in-class-software
| enabled company would have a massive advantage over the rest.
|
| Interested to hear if anyone has insights about this
| sjg007 wrote:
| Well there's Flexport.
| bobby_bob wrote:
| There were some interesting profiles following the NotPetya
| attack on Maersk in 2017 where Maersk claimed to have 1,200 -
| 1,500 applications, 49,000 laptops, 6,200 servers.
|
| Maersk are entering into block-chain "distributed ledger
| technology" with IBM and similar modern solutions. But one
| article put $300 of every $2,000 of shipping costs for
| administration and paperwork[0].
|
| I think you're right, there is a massive advantage to be had,
| and companies are chasing that advantage. But from my
| (tangential logistics) background, even the biggest shipping
| companies have the usual range of legacy systems, heavy
| administration overhead, plenty of paperwork, excel-based-tools
| and huge integration headaches.
|
| 0 - https://www.supplychaindigital.com/technology-4/maersk-
| and-i...
| oliv__ wrote:
| _> 300 of every $2,000 of shipping costs for administration
| and paperwork_
|
| Damn that's a lot. I understand this is a capital intensive
| industry so I guess it's hard/impossible to get in now but it
| seems like if someone started a competitor from scratch and
| had great software as the foundation of their company, they'd
| make a killing
| bobthepanda wrote:
| A good deal of it probably has to do with how crazy customs
| gets in every single port, and how to properly insure
| goods. (Lloyd's of London got its start in marine
| insurance.)
|
| If your paperwork is mostly driven by other actors tech
| probably won't help all that much. Tech has not made
| significant inroads in disrupting American health
| insurance, for example.
| akudha wrote:
| Is there a reason these customs processes can't be
| simplified? Or is it due to some perverse capitalist
| reason, like TurboTax lobbying against simpler tax code?
| codesforhugs wrote:
| One big factor is simply that a customs authority can
| dictate whatever process it wishes for ships who want to
| load/unload cargo there.
|
| It's also not just customs, there are a ton of ancillary
| processes related to berthing - things like harbor fees,
| environmental documentation etc.
|
| I know of at least one case where, as recently as ~2015,
| a shipping company had to keep around old machines with
| IE8 because that was the only way to interact with
| authorities at a given port.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| - Every set of goods has its own regulations. Ships carry
| all sorts of goods.
|
| - Every country has different customs regulations, so
| paperwork is not really that reusable across ports.
|
| - Customs is a huge source of fraud. In poorly managed
| countries it is one of the prime vectors for bribery and
| corruption. So destination ports have to verify
| everything even if they do receive the paperwork, because
| there's no trust.
|
| Generally speaking if you want to cut customs red tape
| your options are some kind of free trade deal (which is
| not necessarily popular and never covers all types of
| goods), or banding together with a bunch of different
| countries to submit to one supranational entity like the
| EU. In fact we have a live example of how complicated
| customs arrangements can be; look at how trade from UK to
| EU has been disrupted by Brexit and the introduction of
| customs.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Here in Norway it's mostly been a lack of focus and
| money.
|
| The government doesn't seem to consider the huge hidden
| cost to the businesses in the country this represents,
| and the businesses haven't been stellar at highlighting
| it, which I guess is because they mostly just push that
| cost onto the consumers.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > had great software as the foundation
|
| This is obviously something that affects how competitive
| you can be. As an example, our software allowed a customer
| to go from 5-6 hours of work in their previous application,
| to less than 10 minutes in ours for a typical workload.
|
| However, a big remaining issue is that there's a lot of
| local laws and procedures around which are not exposed in a
| computer-friendly way. If they are computerized they're
| often old systems with serious limitations.
|
| For example, import declarations in Denmark is limited to
| only 99 goods items, so consolidation of goods items is
| almost required, especially in e-commerce settings, which
| again makes it more difficult if things are re-exported
| (customer didn't want that jacket say).
|
| This can't be fixed on the commercial side, it requires
| work by the government agencies.
| tester34 wrote:
| "great software"
|
| "logistics"
|
| "from scratch"
|
| it does not compile, I guess it's just like those ERP
| Systems - you don't need shitton of domain knowledge,
| because you need fuckton of domain knowledge and during
| development you'll learn even more and have to refactor a
| lot of stuff frequently for edge cases.
| staz wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1831/ relevant xkcd
| bombcar wrote:
| 15% overhead is actually pretty low all things considering.
| jacurtis wrote:
| Yeah the cost for paperwork and administration in
| aviation is over 50%.
| dmux wrote:
| Also tangential: I'm not sure about the real-life software
| itself, but IIRC, the example app in Eric Evan's Domain Driven
| Design is a shipping logistics app!
| Treblemaker wrote:
| There was a very interesting Omega Tau podcast about this very
| subject a while back. They go into a lot of detail about the
| optimization problem and how they address it.
|
| http://traffic.libsyn.com/omegataupodcast/omegatau-146-conta...
|
| Also: a plug for Omega Tau, one of my favorite podcasts.
| https://omegataupodcast.net
|
| Edited to add: go to the Archive page and scroll down. About
| half the episodes are in English and half in German.
| russellendicott wrote:
| In 2016 John Willis was with Docker and he gave a talk where he
| casually recommended a book called The Box [1] about how
| shipping containers have shaped the modern world. When I was
| reading it there was a part where they talk about how the
| logistics optimization problem caused the major shippers to be
| some of the earliest adopters of computers. Interesting book.
|
| [1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/316767.The_Box
| ghaff wrote:
| That book has a lot of interesting lessons to draw from [1]
| and that was even before they became a ubiquitous analogy for
| various things related to software containers. Sun's Jonathan
| Schwartz was talking up this book in the late 90s.
|
| Three I picked out were:
|
| - Existing infrastructure matters (e.g. SuezMax)
|
| - Standards matter (container size and handling needed to be
| standardized)
|
| - Process matters (e.g. containers needed changes to the way
| loading and unloading was done, and hence changes to labor
| agreements, at major ports)
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/three-lessons-from-the-
| shipping-co...
| gimboland wrote:
| The podcast "Containers" also covers how shipping containers
| have shaped the mordern world -- well worth a listen, though
| I don't recall it mentioning this aspect of their logistics.
| jcpst wrote:
| I'm a software engineer at one of these global logistics
| companies.
|
| The market is extremely competitive. We are one of the biggest
| in the business, and we only capture small percent (I heard 3%
| before) of market share.
|
| We build event driven systems primarily glued together with
| Kafka. There are thousands of deployed products.
| executesorder66 wrote:
| flexport? (Sorry that's the only company I can think of that
| does something along those lines)
| sevengraff wrote:
| I'm interested to read about this if you've got links to
| related blogs or such.
| jcpst wrote:
| On the logistics business side, I'll admit that my
| knowledge is from the day-to-day and don't read a lot
| outside of work.
|
| Our company does have plenty of marketing material of
| course: https://www.chrobinson.com/en-us/about-
| us/technology/robinso...
|
| I could ask some of the data science folks I know in the
| org if they have blogs, I'd be curious about that as well.
|
| We have a blog that slowed down during covid (we've been
| very busy), but here's one post about a serialization
| library we open-sourced:
| https://engineering.chrobinson.com/technology/inside-chr-
| avr...
| soheil wrote:
| Who wants to start a company to disrupt logistics software
| like? Closest thing I can think of is Flexport.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| The BBC article [0] is saying that apparently an older parallel
| channel has been reopened. Does anyone know where this might be?
| I can't find a parallel channel that would bypass this
| blockage...
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56505413
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Indeed, the ship is stranded between the Small Bitter Lake and
| the Suez Port so there seems to be no bypass available. (The
| New Suez Canal doesn't cover this particular range.)
| walrus01 wrote:
| a video from 4 months ago, what it normally looks like to transit
| the canal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwdU2cYRbnM
| jansan wrote:
| At the end of the video he says that he estimates the transit
| toll for his ship to be around 200,000$. Wow!
| alwayshumans wrote:
| One interesting thing is the toll often fluctuates due to the
| oil price.
|
| If the toll is deemed to be too high a vessel always has the
| option of going around the Cape.
|
| Realistically it's always an option but the added time plus
| the additional wear on a vessel makes it undesirable.
| tasuki wrote:
| Some back-of-the-napkin calculations: The ship's got over 20k
| containers, so less than $10 per container. Shipping a
| container from Asia to Europe costs thousands of dollars, so
| passing through the canal is less than 1% of the cost. Sounds
| fair to me?
| jansan wrote:
| The ship in the video is not a container ship but a taker
| or bulk cargo ship, so you cannot calculate this way. But I
| am sure it is not much if you divide the toll fee by total
| shipping cost or even the value of the cargo. It was just
| the total sum that I found impressive.
| tasuki wrote:
| Oh, good point - I mixed it up with Ever Given. Agreed
| $200k is a lot, but probably totally insignificant
| compared to the major costs (fuel, wear & tear).
|
| Maintaining the channel seems to be a lot of work... like
| when ships crash into the bank and block it.
| [deleted]
| walrus01 wrote:
| I wonder how effective two giant ground based winches would be,
| pulling on the mooring attachment points, on diagonally opposite
| sides of the ship?
|
| If it remains stuck, perhaps they might need to bring in a
| suction dredger to work on the area around the bow?
| jacquesm wrote:
| They would pull it down as well as sideways.
| [deleted]
| tilolebo wrote:
| Tide should apparently play a major role in unblocking the
| vessel, according to
|
| https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374708535603433472?...
|
| Live local tide: https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Suez-
| Egypt/tides/lat...
| fullstop wrote:
| I am hopeful, but for some unfounded reason I'm giving it equal
| chances of suffering from structural failure when that happens
| and dumping shipping containers into the canal.
|
| I was able to find news reports of the canal being dredged in
| 2015 but nothing since then.
|
| edit: I see that they've already had one high tide opportunity
| which did not dislodge the vessel. From your tide chart link, I
| can see that the tides get progressively deeper until the end
| of the month, but that is a long time to be stuck there.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| relevant:
|
| _> If this AIS track is genuine, the captain of Ever Given has
| written one hell of a resignation letter..._
| https://twitter.com/TheDreadShips/status/1374654080082120704
|
| I'll kindly ask everyone to refrain from cracking "yo-mamma"
| jokes. thanks :)
| posterboy wrote:
| Do the ships have remote control options?
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| they often do at least the smaller vessels[1]. should be able
| to find interesting exposed endpoints on shodan. Pentest-
| Partners did a post[2] on interfering with load management
| software in container ships.
|
| [1] https://www.livewire-
| connections.com/sites/default/files/fil...
|
| [2] https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/sinking-
| contai...
| p1mrx wrote:
| Ever given run aground and divert you.
| person_of_color wrote:
| This system seems messed up and is ready for disruption. Lets
| replace gigantic container ships with a worldwide flock of drones
| following the sun 24/7.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is going to take a while. And it puts the other boats in the
| canal in a pickle as well, they can't exactly back out (easily,
| or even at all).
| carols10cents wrote:
| In a chapter of "Ninety Percent of Everything", the author rides
| a container ship through the Suez Canal and relates what it's
| like, if this has piqued your interest about the shipping
| industry. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16044961-ninety-
| percent-...
| u678u wrote:
| Aren't they just a dozen Filipinos or Russians keeping the boat
| clean while the auto pilot makes a slight adjustment every few
| hours? I'm not sure how exciting it would be.
| jq-r wrote:
| I've never travelled through Suez, but did some other canals
| like Panama and Kiel. Autopilot won't be used there I'm sure.
| Canal Authority requires having a Pilot onboard and he gives
| commands to the Helmsman.
|
| Even on the open sea I've never seen that the autopilot
| actually steers the ship, it will only keep the heading, and
| sound an alert when there is time to change heading. So the
| watchkeeping Officer will set new heading and steer the ship
| in a new direction.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > while the auto pilot makes a slight adjustment every few
| hours?
|
| Ah, that explains it.
|
| > I'm not sure how exciting it would be.
|
| Right now it would be pretty exciting.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > I'm not sure how exciting it would be.
|
| I'm pretty sure that is a feature not a bug. Kinda like
| servers... if something is exciting it means something went
| wrong.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I haven't read the book, but I have traveled on a container
| ship through the Suez Canal. It's not really what I would
| call exciting, but it is fairly interesting. It takes less
| than a day to transit, and the scenery is relatively varied -
| you get to see urban areas, some rural farmland, beaches, and
| full out desert. Both in front and behind are dozens of
| massive container ships, just as big as the one you're on.
| It's quite humbling.
|
| All this is in contrast to the rest of the time you are
| onboard. You are right that not very much happens. The ocean
| is very, very big. The vast majority of the time you can't
| see any land, or any other ships. If you don't have a
| satellite receiver of your own, there is no internet, no
| news, no nothing. Sometimes there is a storm. Sometimes there
| is a sunset. Most of the time there's nothing of note. I
| found it really relaxing, but it's definitely not for
| everyone. It's also a very expensive way to travel compared
| to commercial airlines or even long distance rail.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| How does one end up traveling on a container ship?
|
| Is that something you can pay to do?
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Most of the ships have unused cabins, and some shipping
| companies allow civilians to book them as a sort of
| quirky cruise experience. There is quite a lot of
| paperwork involved, and you need to book fairly far in
| advance, but it's totally doable if you have the cash and
| the time. When I went it cost around us$100 per night.
| Going from Europe to Asia takes 3-4 weeks, I think going
| around the world (both Suez and Panama) can take 6 weeks
| or more.
| gambiting wrote:
| For people who are on no-flight lists for whatever
| reason, this is one of the very few ways to travel across
| the ocean too.
| dopeboy wrote:
| I had no clue - this is fascinating. Do you mind sharing
| who you booked with?
| alisonatwork wrote:
| The company I travelled with was actually Evergreen, so I
| was on one of these "Ever Foo" ships people are talking
| about upthread. The photos on Twitter look very similar
| to ones I took at the time.
|
| I booked through a specialized travel agent in the EU
| that has since gone bust, but if you search the web for
| freighter cruise or cargo ship cruise you should be able
| to find some other companies that can help out.
| cycomanic wrote:
| My parents traveled on container ships quite a few times
| (twice to NZ and OZ). Trips are typically booked through
| specialised travel agents (you can find them quite easily
| via Google). There is quite a community of people doing
| these trips, mainly pensioners, because you need to have
| time and can't be sure about timing.
|
| For those thinking about doing it, the Asia/Africa routes
| from Europe are much more interesting. Going across the
| Atlantic or Pacific is much less interesting. Also in the
| modern age of container freight you don't have much time
| at the ports, and often the captains are reluctant to let
| you get off, because they are on such tight schedule and
| delays would quickly cost 100s of 1000s of dollars per
| hour (that will give you an idea about the economic
| impact of this blockage).
|
| My mother actually travelled on a loose cargo freighter
| in the 90s. That was a completely different experience
| because you would often have several days or a week at
| port.
| e2021 wrote:
| I did this in 2012 from Australia to South Korea - theres
| a bunch of specialized travel agencies you can book
| through. From memory it took about 10 days.
|
| The cost was about $100 / day, but this was almost 10
| years ago, so I guess it went up by now. This isn't
| really competitive as travel, but if you consider the
| experience of being on a container ship a holiday in
| itself, the cost was quite reasonable IMO.
|
| There was one other passenger on board, and we could go
| anywhere on the ship without an escort except the engine
| room. I really enjoyed it, but its not for everyone as
| there is no communication / internet access available so
| you have to be the sort of person who can entertain
| yourself.
|
| Also wouldn't go if you get seasick easily. Unlike say
| cruise ships, the crew isn't too worried about passenger
| comfort, and wil just plow straight through storms.
| dmux wrote:
| It definitely has. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll be
| checking it out!
| austinjp wrote:
| Genuine question: why "EVER GIVEN" when "EVERGREEN" is written on
| the side of the ship?
|
| Someone with insider knowledge: is this a typo or similar error?
| How does it happen and proliferate without being corrected?
| cotillion wrote:
| Evergreen is the shipping line which owns the ship. I guess
| they name their ships Ever <something>.
| mkl wrote:
| From the Twitter thread: "For the confused: MV EVER GIVEN's
| operator is Evergreen Marine (https://evergreen-line.com) and
| Ever___ is a naming convention for some vessels."
| skore wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ever_Given
|
| vs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Marine
| manigandham wrote:
| "Evergreen" is the name of the shipping company.
|
| "Ever Given" is the name of the ship and written in smaller
| font on the bow and (always) on the stern.
| anu7df wrote:
| I think Evergreen is the shipping company. The name of the ship
| could be Ever Given.
| wscott wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ship...
|
| scroll down to #13 and read the names of the sister ships. The
| evergreen shipping line has 7 identical ships named "Ever XXX"
| eloisius wrote:
| Evergreen is a Taiwanese conglomerate that owns several
| freighters (along with an airline, hotels, god knows what else)
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Is this gonna cause the next recession or what
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Damn, imagine having to go around South America as a detour.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Unless I'm very much mistaken, the Suez is in Egypt, so the
| detour would be around Africa.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Considering the threat from Nigeria pirates, they probably
| will just wait until everything resolves.
| cycomanic wrote:
| ? This is the first time I hear about Nigerian pirates. The
| problem several years ago were Somalian pirates, which
| incidentally are next to the Suez route.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| https://www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre/live-
| piracy-...
| saalweachter wrote:
| I mean, technically you could detour around South America it
| just probably isn't recommended.
|
| I wonder if, if you're a container ship leaving China today,
| headed for Europe, if it makes sense to head for Panama
| instead, purely on the metric of time, or if you're still
| better off either rounding Africa or just waiting for the
| Suez to clear.
|
| (I assume from a fuel/logistics point it is cheapest just to
| wait.)
| devdas wrote:
| Around the horn of Africa. The Suez canal is in Egypt, Africa.
| The Panama canal in in Panama, central America.
|
| You are thinking of the wrong channel.
| [deleted]
| andrewla wrote:
| Partially refloated! [1] Apparently they're going to move it
| aside so traffic can start to get through.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/GlobalHogg/status/1374709733614100487
| bombcar wrote:
| The original link says that this is apparently a misinformed
| rumor.
| joncrane wrote:
| Nope, still stuck as of this post. It's easy to check:
|
| https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000
| [deleted]
| spiritplumber wrote:
| They'll have to slowly rock her back and forth in the roll axis
| while they pull to get her aligned with the canal again. Use
| earthmovers.
| system2 wrote:
| Let's hope someone from the canal operations read your comment.
| mzs wrote:
| 50cm sat image:
| https://twitter.com/capellaspace/status/1374758445304397825
| mperham wrote:
| Holy ship.
| scpedicini wrote:
| Reddit is that way. That's where Dane Cook calibre word puns
| belong.
| avaldeso wrote:
| Ship happens
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| It was buoy to happen at some point.
|
| Edit: should of ended it with "schooner or later"
| lproven wrote:
| Should _have_...
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| I bet your real fun at parties...
|
| Just so you know you are like the 1000th person to tell
| me that, if it's not sunk in yet, it's never going to.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| You're
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| Now that is a new one, because you're is just a
| contraction which is not necessary in written English.
| sokoloff wrote:
| They're talking about
|
| > I bet your real fun at parties...
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| See my brain is that bad at English I didn't even see
| that one.
| tanbog2 wrote:
| Me fail English? Unpossible!
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| The kid with learning difficulties struggling with
| English. It's a shock I know.
|
| See it's why the one/two word "correction" response comes
| off as such a dick move. It doesn't actually help the
| other person. It either comes with zero meaning so offers
| no way to learn (if it's actually meant as help which, I
| have my doubts that it actually is most of the time). Or
| it's being said in a superior tone to someone who can not
| help it and has heard it soo many times it basically
| becomes an insult.
| kjrose wrote:
| This is fascinating. I wonder if it really was solidly trapped if
| they would resort to essentially scuttling it just to get it out
| of the way faster.
| herendin2 wrote:
| The canal isn't very deep there. Scuttling it would make the
| situation much worse
| wang_li wrote:
| It has like 50cm clearance. If it "sank" you wouldn't be able
| to tell by looking.
| tleb_ wrote:
| Do you have a source? The boat's draught is 15.7m according
| to [0] and the Suez canal supports ships with a draft up to
| 20m and is 23m to 24m deep.[1]
|
| [0] https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000 [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Capacity
| wang_li wrote:
| Am I misreading the AIS data there? I read that to mean
| that it's a 15.7m vessel in 16m water.
| mikey_p wrote:
| I believe that is stating that it draws a maximum of 16m,
| but is currently drawing 15.7m
| stevespang wrote:
| Time to break out the lift bags. 10,000 of them all roped
| together below water line, then inflate.
| mongol wrote:
| This worries me. What if it becomes stuck for real?
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| Scrap
| aerovistae wrote:
| Then they'll fix it. That's what engineers do. :)
| ls612 wrote:
| Disclaimer: Fixing it may involve high explosives and loss of
| property
| k3liutZu wrote:
| At some point that will become cheaper than delaying
| everything else.
| [deleted]
| testfoobar wrote:
| Compare the red/black line on the ship's hull and the water line.
| Under normal conditions, the red/black line is parallel to the
| water across the length of the ship:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=evergreen+ever+given&source=...
|
| In this picture of the ship stuck in the Suez, the red/black line
| appears to tilt noticeably upwards towards the bow:
|
| https://twitter.com/marceldirsus/status/1374480496789393412
|
| If this isn't some sort of optical illusion, the bow of the ship
| appears runaground by quite a bit.
| [deleted]
| kerpele wrote:
| I'm not a ship engineer but I do know that ships are not built
| to be suspended from the ends. I guess in the worst case the
| hull breaks which would mean the canal to be blocked for quite
| a while.
| herendin2 wrote:
| That's usually only a real problem when the ship is suspended
| in the air, between wavetops. This one is still in the water,
| though maybe it has a little less support in the center than
| normal
| flurdy wrote:
| The bulbous bow seems pretty jammed into the side
|
| https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1374597391463120896
|
| It has gone in with some force.
| [deleted]
| mixmax wrote:
| All ships of this size have a number of large ballast tanks
| that they use to pump seawater in and out to compensate for
| placement of cargo.
|
| My guess would be that they've emptied the ballast tanks in the
| end that has run aground and filled them in the other end to
| rise the keel.
| testfoobar wrote:
| That makes sense. I wonder though how much difference ballast
| rebalancing can make on this fully loaded ship.
| darkwater wrote:
| So, fellow Europeans, prepare for a longer delivery time for most
| of your items starting from, I don't know, 10 days from now?
| What's the buffer size for most of the products in, say, an
| Amazon Fulfillment facility?
| pharke wrote:
| Be prepared for an oil shock as well.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Well isn't it nice of the Chinese to invest in rail!
| fifilura wrote:
| Also, I expect this kind of stop will cause the ships to be
| lining up in the unloading facilities in e.g. Rotterdam, so
| there will be secondary obstructions beyond the time the canal
| is blocked.
| _Microft wrote:
| Here is another accident of the "Ever Given" in Hamburg [0] in
| which a harbour ferry suffered a total loss after being rammed by
| her. Supposed cause was an unfortunate combination of slow speeds
| and severe wind which seems to be a difficult situation for ships
| as tall as these.
|
| Maybe a similar combination of events happened here?
|
| [0] https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/frachter-rammt-faehre-knapp-
| an-d...
| chki wrote:
| Wow, the same ship with a very unusual accident just 14 Months
| ago. A very bad look and hints to a deeper systemic issue that
| was not fixed.
| brazzy wrote:
| The cause for that accident seems to have been strong wind,
| which apparently makes these huge ships very hard or even
| impossible to maneuver when they are going slow.
|
| If true, then the "systemic issue" is only that ships are
| getting too big.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The cause for that accident seems to have been strong
| wind
|
| The more descriptive cause is the failure to pay for
| adequate tug support/escort.
|
| "(Escort tug charge) = 6,600 SDR/tug"
|
| https://openjicareport.jica.go.jp/pdf/11657251_04.pdf
| brazzy wrote:
| I was talking about the incident in Hamburg, not at the
| Suez canal. I'm not sure about Suez, but I'm pretty sure
| you don't get to choose whether and how many tugs you
| need at Hamburg; the port will decide that.
|
| The article cites a tug captain as saying that they have
| a very limited ability to react to big ships being pushed
| by strong wind. They compare it to driving a care on ice.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Hi. Skipper here (nothing of the size of the ship in
| question, obviously:).
|
| Ships of _ANY_ size are hard or impossible to maneuver when
| they are going slow and have a blackout. The size doesn 't
| matter.
|
| The control surfaces only work when they move with regards
| to water.
|
| The ship that does not move is uncontrollable with rudder
| and it needs to use something else to help it maneuver.
| This something else can be a tugboat that rotates the ship
| by the force it can generate, or it can be thrusters.
| Thrusters aren't propulsion method and they are relatively
| small and can counter only so much wind.
| brazzy wrote:
| I was referring to the incident in Hamburg, where there
| was (according to the article) no blackout, the ship had
| two local pilots on board and a tugboat attached.
|
| And yet, they were unable to prevent the wind from
| pushing them into a moored ferry they were passing.
| speexmex wrote:
| Isn't this why new ships are starting to have multiple
| 360 degree electrical drivers instead of one big
| propeller? I think they are called iso-pods.
| lmilcin wrote:
| You mean this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azipod
|
| I think the biggest issue is complexity and resulting
| unreliability. On a ship that has to be in constant use
| for decades you want things that are simple and reliable.
|
| "The latest design, the Azipod X, incorporates these
| improvements, with a view to a service interval of five
| years, and features bearings that can be taken apart and
| repaired from inside the pod while the ship is harbored
| normally"
|
| Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. They are working on
| it:)
|
| Also an important factor on large vessel is fuel
| efficiency. You don't want anything sticking out unless
| absolutely necessary, so these would have to be meant for
| propulsion. But because of complex construction I can
| expect they are less efficient than just straight through
| axle and a huge propeller on it.
|
| I expect things like this to be useful on utility vessels
| of small to medium size where you don't necessarily need
| so much efficiency but the utility comes from being able
| to maneuver quickly and in various conditions.
| gebruikersnaam wrote:
| Harbor tugs are more commonly equipped with these:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voith_Schneider_Propeller
|
| They're quite efficient (although maybe only for lower
| speeds) and provide extreme maneuverability.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| They usually isn't used as the primary means of
| propulsion on most bigger ships. It's also not uncommon
| for them to be retractable. If you need a large ship at a
| very specific position for a week, then you definetly
| need it, and that is a common use case as it allows for
| impressively accurate control. Heck, you could avoid
| moorings altogether and just keep it in place without it
| if you wanted to.
| Symmetry wrote:
| For ships that have turbo-electric drive trains rather
| than big shafts, I wonder if it would be possible to
| vector the propellers somewhat for better
| maneuverability, the same way that rockets use gimballing
| engines? Probably not worth the maintenance though, with
| sealant and salt water considerations.
| NorwegianDude wrote:
| It's not uncommon for ships to have thrusters that can
| move or rotate the ship in any directions. When doing
| underwater operations the ship needs to stay in place,
| and eg. GPS and/or triangulation from land or oil rigs is
| used to make sure it holds the correct position, even in
| quite strong winds.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| This is common on cruise ships. They spend so much of
| their time going in and out of port the extra
| manoeuvrability is worth it in requiring fewer tugs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuth_thruster
| lmilcin wrote:
| Anything else than straight shaft with a propeller on it
| is a loss of efficiency and reliability.
|
| When the fuel efficiency and reliability drive your
| competitiveness that is a huge issue.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Something that people perhaps don't appreciate is that
| typical large ships like this don't even have a gearbox
| (which would be perhaps 95% efficient).
|
| They use large two stroke diesel engines which can be
| stopped and started in reverse. They use an extra valve
| in the engine head to admit air for starting and have
| valve gear which controls the direction.
|
| Cruise ships on the other hand have electrical house
| loads which are almost the same as their propulsion
| loads. In addition to the manoeuvrability advantages this
| makes diesel electric drive advantageous.
| foobarian wrote:
| Megaship engines are so fascinating. Over 100k horse
| power!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXeBQrio4Uo&t=680s
| candyyfl wrote:
| Can I also ask if it's true that such a beast like the
| ever given would have as little as 30% of back maneuver
| power compare to forward sail?
| lmilcin wrote:
| I have absolutely no first hand knowledge of these
| beasts, but some common sense here below:
|
| The engine can most likely work both directions equally.
|
| The propeller is optimized to work in forward direction,
| so it will have worse efficiency going in the other
| direction.
|
| The rotation would have to be limited when going in
| reverse because of cavitation (and maybe other structural
| limitations). That again is a result of the wrong shape
| of the propeller (when in wrong direction).
|
| The hull will have significantly more drag when in wrong
| direction.
|
| Now, engine power is defined as whatever it can put out
| and if the engine works the same way in both directions
| then power is the same also.
|
| So you can think this way: most likely it has the same
| _power_ as going forward but it can 't use it and
| whatever it can use will be much less efficiently
| translated into motion.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| fifilura wrote:
| I love the position of the Swedish flag in that photo.
|
| Given that the accident happened in Germany and the ship is
| Taiwanese.
|
| It is just freaky, I don't know if it is good or bad to be
| associated with such an incident.
|
| In a plane crash they are usually quick to paint over the name
| of the airline company to not be associated. I don't think this
| is the same though.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > It is just freaky, I don't know if it is good or bad to be
| associated with such an incident.
|
| I think it's not good because of the potential to become
| politicly charged. Add some "cyber" and it has NatSec types
| reeling. There is a scenario in _Ghost Fleet_ [1] where a
| vessel sailing under a Chinese flag blocks the Panama canal
| in a theater of war with the West. Not going to issue any
| spoilers but it's a brilliant (fiction) novel for
| hypothetical future war scenario's.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Fleet_(novel)
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| I believe the US military was worried about a German or
| Japanese strike on the Panama canal in WW2. And the Suez
| Canal was literally blocked by scuttling ships when Egypt
| took control in the Suez crisis.
| overscore wrote:
| The Panama Canal has always been much more vulnerable
| than Suez, as the latter is sea-level for it's entire
| length and has no locks.
|
| Destroying or blocking as few as three locks could semi-
| permanently block all traffic in Panama, or worse, drain
| Gatun.
| lovelyviking wrote:
| Can't see the flag, because the whole page is blocked by some
| BS (presumably in german). Blocking own content or creating
| obstacles to see it ... what can be more ridiculous. I just
| close such web pages and never come back.
| ben_w wrote:
| I saw a cookies consent popover followed by a "oh no ad
| block" popover.
|
| I can't get worked up against them for wanting to get paid,
| even though I regard adverts as parasites of time, energy,
| and bandwidth and won't disable my ad blocker for them -- I
| don't have solutions, just the aphorism about two wrongs.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's a GDPR consent banner.
|
| I didn't tolerate it either -- I can often figure out
| which button is "Necessary cookies only", but not in this
| case.
|
| However, Firefox's reader mode retains the main image: ht
| tps://www.mopo.de/image/32016852/2x1/940/470/afcc092634a9
| d...
| Draken93 wrote:
| The first notification informes you about the cookies the
| website is using. You need to agree to the use of the
| cookies to continue. This is mandatory by european law.
|
| But I agree with you that the placement and the fact that
| the banner blocks the whole website is unconvenient.
|
| The second notification tells you to turn your ad-blocker
| of or to watch a video instead.
| jlokier wrote:
| > You need to agree to the use of the cookies to
| continue. This is mandatory by european law.
|
| No, it is not mandatory by European law. The myth
| persists.
|
| The site can use essential cookies or no cookies just
| fine, with no banner required at all. Nothing.
|
| If they decide to use non-essential cookies, for example
| privacy-intrusion tracking cookies to follow your
| activity around the web for advertising, then they need
| to notify you of this tracking and obtain consent. You
| have a right to know, after all, and you might prefer to
| exercise your rights by declining consent. But nothing
| requires it to be a large banner, and nothing requires
| the "reject all" button to be difficult to find.
| Draken93 wrote:
| I know, I should have clarified that. But to be honest,
| most newspapers use more then the essential tokens.
|
| As I wrote, I find the blocking of the website and the
| placement of the banner unconvinient. I am also convinced
| that it should be mandatory to have a "essential cookies
| only" button.
|
| I just wanted to explain what the banner is for, as the
| parent comment did not understand the german text.
| sildur wrote:
| The law doesn't say that the cookie banner has to cover
| the entire page. It doesn't say either that the button to
| reject the cookies must be hidden at the end of the form.
| Draken93 wrote:
| "But I agree with you that the placement and the fact
| that the banner blocks the whole website is
| unconvenient."
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Clicking "Akzeptieren und weiter zu mopo.de" will let you
| view the page.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Not the first time the Swedes have had experience with tall
| ships causing problems.
| _Microft wrote:
| Ha, you refer to the Vasa, I guess? ;)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)
| cameronperot wrote:
| I believe the cause of the incident here was a blackout [1].
|
| [1] https://gcaptain.com/grounded-mega-ship-blocking-suez-
| canal-...
| mzs wrote:
| GAC has pulled that claim, they made it here and now it 404s:
| https://www.gac.com/news--media/hot-port-news/container-
| ship...
| speexmex wrote:
| AFP reports gust of wind.
|
| > Early reports speculated the vessel suffered a loss of
| power, but the ship's operator, Evergreen Marine Corp, told
| Agence France-Presse it ran aground after being hit by a gust
| of wind.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/24/huge-
| container...
| thirdlamp wrote:
| Judging by the timeline on https://www.myshiptracking.com
| it looks like something that would be called pilot induced
| oscillation in aviation. Obviously speculation on my part,
| could be that loss of power weakened control authority over
| the ship and it became hard to manoeuvre.
|
| The ship comes around the curve travelling north close to
| the outside (right, east, starboard) shore then overcorrect
| to the west shore then overcorrect more gravely to the east
| again and run aground.
| nickkell wrote:
| Let's hope all those backed up ships aren't stuck as long as
| these chaps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Cargo: Eggs, fruit
|
| Yikes.
| nickkell wrote:
| From what I recall they wanted to sell apples to the
| Egyptians, but the government refused. The crew ended up
| throwing the cargo overboard before it could perish.
|
| I heard about this originally from a great German podcast
| "Geschichten aus der Geschichte":
| https://www.geschichte.fm/podcast/zs180/
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I watched a great video about this a few days ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/4DiXRCo7eBs
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Question: If the ship is called the "Ever Given", why does its
| side say "Evergreen" instead?
| robocat wrote:
| Here's a photo with the ship name "Ever Given" in smaller
| letters on the bow:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26560319
|
| The shipping company name "Evergreen" is in huge letters on the
| side of the ship.
| dwater wrote:
| Evergreen is a huge shipping company
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Marine
| noarchy wrote:
| It does say "Ever Given" near the front, albeit in much smaller
| size.
| buildbot wrote:
| It's the shipping line, all their ships are named ever-
| something iirc https://www.evergreen-line.com/ Based out of
| Taiwan
| tilolebo wrote:
| Maybe the company behind it?
|
| See similar vessels https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/EVER-
| GIVEN-IMO-9811000-...
| sebirocs wrote:
| because the ship has no fucks "ever given" :P
| tcpekin wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1374438210315513864.html
| shortlived wrote:
| Really interesting post! Thanks for sharing.
|
| How does something like this happen?
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Loss of propulsion at the wrong time.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| One post said that the ship was cutting off other ships, so
| possibly some reckless sailing as well.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's cutting off other ships because when it lost power it
| drifted sideways and blocked the canal. It's now stuck in
| both embankments and the only vessels getting past are very
| flat submarines.
| pimlottc wrote:
| GP is referencing a comment on Instagram [0] that states
| that it cut off another ship enter the channel /before/
| it grounded:
|
| > @tjcsalisbury Yepp! And I believe they cut us off this
| morning entering the canal and then this happened and
| right after they ran aground the ship behind us lost
| power and almost hit us so it's been a fun day lol but
| now we are just anchored here hopefully it won't be to
| long but from the looks of it that ship is super stuck
| they had a bunch of tugs trying to pull and push it
| earlier but it was going nowhere there is a little
| excavator trying to dig out the bow
|
| 0: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMxEKHanW62/
| _ah wrote:
| ...which is interesting. Two unrelated ships lost power
| at the same location on the same day? Curious.
| nerdponx wrote:
| You think someone was bribed to choke up the canal or
| something? What incentive would you have to do something
| like that? Is this part of a spy movie?
| berkes wrote:
| I'd imagine a long blockage has an effect on oil prices,
| as most oil coming from the Gulf States to Europe (and
| America's west coasts?) would normally travel through
| there.
|
| It essentially plugs a giant oil 'pipeline'
| austhrow743 wrote:
| I don't think that happened but if I did I'd be thinking
| financial market manipulation for private gain long
| before intelligence agency shenanigans by states.
| danans wrote:
| Looks like it swallowed without chewing
| capableweb wrote:
| If you go to vesselfinder you can follow the drama in real-time!
| Seems it's still stuck: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000
| hef19898 wrote:
| Fond memories. I once tracked a ship carrying a couple of
| containers that were urgently needed driving in circles in the
| English Channel for two weeks.
| Shivetya wrote:
| So how long before they start rerouting, for ships that can
| make that passage South of the horn?
|
| Does anyone know the transit time to pass through the canal
| versus going around the South Africa route?
| jhayward wrote:
| The article on gCaptain said that shippers would begin re-
| routes after 24 hours of closure, which was about 6:00 UTC
| today.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| "If" applies here nicely, website isn't responding for me
| minitoar wrote:
| marinetraffic.com is a good alt
| nothis wrote:
| Considering how niche it is, that's a super snappy and well
| designed site!
|
| EDIT: Just saw they had outages, but I guess nobody ever
| expected it to be trending on twitter. Works fine for me.
| bradj wrote:
| Niche, but very important to participants in the market.
| There is a growing industry of cargo and vessel tracking SaaS
| solutions (including https://Vortexa.com)
| [deleted]
| zests wrote:
| This link is extremely interesting. Keep zooming out all the
| way if you haven't already.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Apparently 30% of all container traffic go through the Suez
| canal. Around 51 ships per day.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| How much longer would it take to go around Africa to
| Gibraltar?
| lb1lf wrote:
| The increase in distance would be approx. 6,000Nm
| (assuming they arrived at the entrance to the Red Sea
| before having to change course).
|
| 6000Nm and, say, 25 knots (probably a bit on the high
| side, but not by much) should add 240 hours of steaming
| or 10 days to the voyage.
|
| (This will be somewhat offset by the lower speed through
| the channel, waiting times &c - I've no idea how long a
| typical Suez transit is.)
| restalis wrote:
| _" I've no idea how long a typical Suez transit is."_
|
| For yachts it is (supposed to be) two days. It's one day
| to Ismailia on either way and then one for the rest. (The
| paperwork however, may take longer, but can be arranged
| in advance.) See more at
| https://www.noonsite.com/report/suez-canal-transit-
| informati...
| larzang wrote:
| 8 days, but the bigger problem is that increases the
| expected sea states encountered by several levels. Huge
| container ships don't like that.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Can you expand as to why not/what "increases expected sea
| states encountered" means? Maybe an ELI5
| sabas_ge wrote:
| Thanks to the mandatory AIS system onboard https://en.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...
| oliv__ wrote:
| Wow. The magnitude of global trade is insane!
| yrro wrote:
| As is the environmental harm
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Super-ships emit ~5g_Co2/Ton/km on average[1], while
| railway is 2-35g, air transport is 700-3000g and truck
| transport is 100-2000g.
|
| Surprisingly, the bigger the boat the more effective. We
| tend to have a bias against larger machines, but often
| they can be the cleanest in proportion.
|
| [1] https://www.ademe.fr/sites/default/files/assets/docum
| ents/86...
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I would assume that were the case because if not,
| presumably it would be cheaper to transport the cargo in
| multiple smaller ships!
|
| Assuming that pollution primarily caused by fuel usage of
| course.
| foepys wrote:
| Isn't the problem that ships are burning heavy oil
| instead of diesel or similar? CO2 isn't the main worry
| afaik, it's the rest that gets blasted unfiltered into
| the atmosphere and the left over sludge that gets
| illegally dumped into the sea.
| lmm wrote:
| Burning that kind of fuel near populated areas is a
| problem, so long-distance shipping is probably the best
| use for it.
| azepoi wrote:
| it's not perfect but it's gotten better apparently. 170
| countries have signed a treaty significantly reducing the
| fuel sulphur content.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPOL_73/78#IMO_2020
|
| https://www.imo.org/fr/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphu
| r-2...
|
| https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/pages/0
| 2-I... The upper limit of the sulphur
| content of ships' fuel oil was reduced to 0.5% (from 3.5%
| previously) - under the so-called "IMO 2020" regulation
| prescribed in the MARPOL Convention. This significantly
| reduces the amount of sulphur oxide emanating from ships.
| epja wrote:
| Ironically, a reduction in sulfur emitted from these
| ships may actually accelerate global warming:
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/01/22/67402/were-
| about...
| yrro wrote:
| 5g per km-tonne adds up to a lot though doesn't it.
|
| "Maritime transport emits around 940 million tonnes of
| CO2 annually and is responsible for about 2.5% of global
| greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (3rd IMO GHG study)."
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/shipping_en
|
| The problem is that we (as a species) are moving far too
| much, far too far.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Some things just work best at scale - rockets that have
| to launch from Earths gravity well apparently do as well:
|
| https://cs.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_(raketa)
|
| And it makes sense if you think about it - as you scale
| up, the ammount of fuel you can carry goes up roghly by
| cube while structure mass, forming a shell effectively
| arround the fuel, goes up by square of size of the
| rocket.
|
| Similar things for air resistance - as you scale up yuour
| rocket the front part creating the most drag will scale
| more slowly than the volume of the rocket that goes to
| fuel, payload and structure.
|
| No wonder Starship is already at 9 meters of width and 18
| m has been mentioned as a possible future upgrade. Its
| already bigger than the massive 66+ meter high medieval
| watchtower in my home town yet it can fly to sub orbital
| speeds without its first stage booster (which is even
| bigger)!
| konjin wrote:
| It's a lot quieter than it used to be.
|
| Even worse for planes on flight radar 24.
| fsagx wrote:
| Cool. It even shows the 7 tugs trying to help.
| tim333 wrote:
| I was looking up how hard can a tug tug. Wikipedia seems to
| imply 65 tons is normal.
| harry8 wrote:
| Had more luck with this one, hug of death?
|
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:5630138/zoo...
| airhead969 wrote:
| Still stuck. 6 tugs are on it and a pleasure craft, possibly
| used to direct operations or some idiot taking pictures.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There will be a ton of pictures to document, and later
| investigate, that incident.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Is the Suez Canal Authority of Egypt or maritime
| authorities in-charge professional enough to do this?
| hef19898 wrote:
| There are professionals, I don't know how it works at
| suez but we have people called "Havarie Kommisar", they
| are the guys brought in by insurances to document and
| certify accidents involving transportation.
| serf wrote:
| >and a pleasure craft
|
| I see that labeling too, but the Tahia Misr2 is a tug,
| sister to the Tahia Misr1.
|
| I'm not sure why it's displaying as a pleasure craft.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Maybe it is enjoying itself?
| airhead969 wrote:
| I don't want to know, do I?
|
| Edit: The phrase "pleasure craft" is a triple entendre,
| and possibly a quadruple.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Ah thanks. I bet it's a data sanitization or registration
| foul-up. It's Egypt, after all, where things don't always
| work honestly or consistently.
| yreg wrote:
| How does it look like normally? I guess full of ships anyway?
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I guess it won't be too hard to unjam it, but imagine how the
| world would change if it does get stuck, everyone would now have
| to go around Africa, probably boosting a few African economies.
|
| A bit like how a tiny bat (citation needed?) changed the course
| of the world for at least a year.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| They would blow up or demolish it before that happens.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Unloading and just dragging off on the land would likely be
| faster option. Blowing up is really worst case to do...
| dmos62 wrote:
| Bulk teleportation startups would see increased interest.
| towergratis wrote:
| > a tiny bat (citation needed?) changed the course of the world
| for at least a year
|
| It wasn't a tiny bat, or a lab accident that changed the course
| of the world.
|
| It was a corrupt non democratic government trying to hide it
| under the carpet, in similar fashion that a similar government
| in USSR try to hide under the carpet the biggest nuclear
| accident in its time.
| rhizome wrote:
| > _It was a corrupt non democratic government trying to hide
| it under the carpet_
|
| Assumes facts not in evidence.
| towergratis wrote:
| Trying to silence Li Wenliang is not evidence?
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Covid was detected in China and the world was alerted. Most
| other countries didn't even react, though. That's hardly on
| China.
|
| From the data we have so far, it was already present and
| undetected in Europe the year before. It may have originated
| in Europe, but that isn't yet clear.
|
| Don't fall to western chauvinism.
| osacial wrote:
| China reported to WHO, that it had EVERYTHING under control
| and that virus was not lethal to humans.
|
| China is west to the USA.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| At the time it was not yet know that the virus is lethal,
| that's all that was reported.
|
| Everything was also under control in China, as was later
| confirmed. Unfortunately by the time the virus was
| detected in China, it was already spread throughout
| Europe, since at least November 2019.
|
| I really didn't expect this sort of rejection of science
| and facts on HN.
| jryle70 wrote:
| IIRC even when Wuhan had been under total lockdown China
| was still upset that other countries called for flight
| bans from China. How is that responsible behavior?
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Again the facts are useful. Early on, several countries
| (including the US and I believe France) repatriated
| citizens even from Wuhan and in several cases without
| quarantine, against the recommendation of Chinese
| authorities and the WHO. After the outbreak in China was
| determined to be limited to Wuhan and there were plenty
| of cases worldwide, it made little sense to ban flights
| from the whole of China. It was obviously an attempt to
| attack China as part of the trade war the US & friends
| have been waging.
|
| After all, most countries still haven't dealt with covid.
| In China (and a few other countries) people's lives have
| returned to normal a long time ago. We should demand our
| politicians put lives before profit instead of letting
| them distract us with lies about China.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The pangolin seems to be the bridge species. Bats have tons of
| coronaviruses, but none of them usually infect humans. The
| question is which animal bridged the gap.
|
| Kinda like how the Mink was going to become the bridge-species
| in Denmark (humans infected Minks with COVID19... and then the
| mink was probably going to infect another species after that).
| speexmex wrote:
| > _The question is which animal bridged the gap._
|
| Humans with a pipette.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Citation?
| [deleted]
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > Bats have tons of coronaviruses
|
| Out of curiosity - are bats affected by these coronaviruses?
| If not, what's different about bats (as compared to humans)?
| khuey wrote:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/why-do-bats-have-
| so-m...
| viraptor wrote:
| > probably boosting a few African economies.
|
| Do you mean some production would shift to Africa, or something
| else?
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Some lucky places can open ports for the giant ships to stop
| and refuel/resupply, that brings a lot of income.
|
| Though maybe I've got the scale wrong, and these ships can
| just buy more fuel and more food at their departure ports and
| go around Africa without stopping...
| austhrow743 wrote:
| There's already a ton of shipping going around the cape and
| yeah, giant cargo ships aren't doing mid trip pit stops
| just for food and fuel.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| They just go around. It's not catastrophic just adds cost
| and time. No refueling or ports required for these mega
| carriers. We'd go around the cape sometimes just because of
| loads, some aren't allowed through, or because fees were
| too high for the value of cargo. Depending on the size of
| the carrier it can add 20 days or so to the voyage.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| Ha, I happened to see it leave Boston August of last year and
| snapped a photo of it because it was jaw dropping big (and I'm
| not a boat person!) the Evergreen had 4 tugboats guiding it. Yeah
| that thing isn't moving without professional help.
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/6Ywgot5wmK6HDNoV6
|
| Edit: so this is the "ever living" that's 335 meters long. The
| ever given is 400 meters long
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Good job wearing a mask and social distancing!
| vxNsr wrote:
| Yeah, don't take this the wrong way but your pic doesn't do it
| justice at all, looks pretty normal sized from your picture.
| nafizh wrote:
| Hey, I am in Boston, which park is that? Looks great to have a
| walk.
| wffurr wrote:
| That's Castle Island and it is quite lovely:
| https://goo.gl/maps/rwbW9JkYURonQpE99
| bluntfang wrote:
| The exif data is on that photo, but i recognized it as castle
| island, and the exif confirmed. really nice park to watch sea
| and air ships.
| TimWolla wrote:
| That's another ship. The tweet is about "Ever Given", not
| "Evergreen".
|
| Edit: Comparing with
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ship...
| it might or might not have been the ship. Evergreen is the name
| of the company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Marine
| kenneth wrote:
| Evergreen is one of the shipping companies from Taiwan.
| Incidentally, one of my favorite airlines EVA Air is their
| spinoff airline, based in Taipei (and far better than the
| flag carrier China Airlines)
| akg_67 wrote:
| The ship is Japanese operated by Taiwanese company,
| according to NHK News this evening in Japan. The ship ran
| aground due to bad weather conditions, poor visibility due
| to sand storm.
| Kye wrote:
| Evergreen is the company. Ever Given is the ship.
| benchtobedside wrote:
| Same one - check out the pictures in the OP. https://pbs.twim
| g.com/media/ExL7VGtVoAYIBKo?format=jpg&name=...
| TimWolla wrote:
| Looking at GP's foto again I believe the name of the ship
| they photographed ends with a 'G'. But I also realized my
| mistake with mixing up the ship's name with the company
| name.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| There you have it, shows you how much I know about boats,
| although the more I've been reading this thread the more
| interested I am about learning more about the industry.
| fumblebee wrote:
| This incident has already been added to opening section for the
| Suez Canal Wikipedia page.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal
|
| I wonder what makes something significant enough to be added to
| this section. A quick scan of the page shows some interesting
| tidbits that aren't present in the opening (to me, more
| noteworthy - so far - than the ongoing blockage):
|
| > The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade.
| Combined with the American transcontinental railroad completed
| six months earlier, it allowed the world to be circled in record
| time.
|
| > In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the canal was the scene of
| a major crossing by the Egyptian army into Israeli-occupied Sinai
| and a counter-crossing by the Israeli army to Egypt. Much
| wreckage from this conflict remains visible along the canal's
| edges.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| This is a big ship. There's no nearby facility to unload or
| service it. Its not something you bring tools in your pickup
| truck to solve the problem.
|
| If its not immediately resolvable with the ships own
| facilities, then its not clear it can be solved in less than
| a-long-time. Maybe years?
|
| Its 200 million pounds. It holds 20,000 units. To unload it
| would take building a facility on-site. And maybe a rail line
| to carry the cargo away.
|
| I have hopes the tug solution will solve it. But if not, then
| there's probably no easy solution at all. Not one that costs
| less than a billion dollars?
| minitoar wrote:
| I will eat my hat if this takes a year to resolve, or costs 1
| billion dollars (excluding lost revenue due to closure, I
| have no idea what that is).
| candyyfl wrote:
| It's not being salvaged at the most promising way, the many
| tugs that surrounds are just not fully capable, the biggest
| of all is less than 200ton bollard pull, together with 2 less
| than 100ton. Surely it's for the reason of both cost saving
| and only gathering available resources from around? If it get
| stuck for longer than few days I bet better capable tugs
| would appear to end the scene
| tilolebo wrote:
| https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/English/Resources/Pages/Floati
| n...
|
| The Baraka1, which is already on the scene, is described
| here as the most powerful tug in the Middle East. It would
| probably take a while to bring in more powerful tugs.
| throwaway0xBEEF wrote:
| If this was a controlled flight into terrain to disrupt
| global container shipping, then yes, it will take more than
| a-short-time. Because drama for consumers of narrative and
| benefits for certain beneficiaries.
|
| "The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies:
| international mobility of both people and goods screeched to
| a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and _breaking
| global supply chains_" - Scenarios for the Future of
| Technology and International Development, 2010.
| piokoch wrote:
| I think it can be done faster, there are people specialized
| in such tasks: https://www.smit.com/#view/map but yes, you
| are right, this is not going to be 2h fix.
| boogies wrote:
| > this is not going to be 2h fix
|
| In fact it's already been 20 hours since the tweet was
| posted. I think the Twitter UI makes that clear enough,
| although reading the full thread is probably easier on
| Nitter
| https://nitter.cc/jsrailton/status/1374438210315513864
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Digging is easier than construction of complex facilities. If
| simpler methods fail, it won't take very long to widen the
| channel enough that they can move the ship out.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Presumably, for as long as the ship is blocking the canal, it
| is important enough to be in the opening section of the
| article. You can imagine that if the ship is there forever, it
| would certainly be in the opening section.
| SilasX wrote:
| >The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade.
| Combined with the American transcontinental railroad completed
| six months earlier, it allowed the world to be circled in
| record time.
|
| Interesting! That prompted me to look up _Around the World in
| 80 Days_ , and it turns it out was published 3 years later
| (1872), using those pieces as part of the journey.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Day...
| frederikvs wrote:
| Once the event is over, I suspect people will review the page
| and decide that this has no place in the opening section. Then
| it'll move down to its rightful place.
|
| Right now it's more a matter of racing to be as up-to-date as
| possible, rather than actually weighing the merits of having
| this in the opening section.
| davismwfl wrote:
| https://gcaptain.com/grounded-mega-ship-blocking-suez-canal-...
| PeterStuer wrote:
| From photos the boat has a giant "Evergreen" lettering on its
| side. Like the other disaster.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/24/middleeast/suez-canal-con...
| aasasd wrote:
| Sorta makes me wonder why another ship, larger than a tugboat,
| couldn't hitch it with a tow rope (whatever the marine term) and
| give it a jerk. I get that ships aren't normally expected to do
| that, but you know, probably need larger tugboats for gigantic
| ships.
| justin66 wrote:
| Based on the photos, the most useful vector a tug (of any
| strength) might take is not available. Yanking the ship
| backwards, off the bank, would work nicely but pulling its bow
| 35 degrees _through_ the bank is pretty rough.
| cwillu wrote:
| I thought virtually all modern tugs can apply their full
| thrust in any direction, regardless of their hull's visible
| "heading".
| sandos wrote:
| They need to pull the aft sideways while keeping the bow
| steady, that way it would angle slightly and then pull back.
| Requires no space behind the ship, and is likely the reverse
| of what happened...
| jhayward wrote:
| Apparently the limiting question is how much force can be
| exerted on the ship and from what locations without damaging it
| (or, damaging it _too much_ ).
|
| That's why recovery specialists are flying in. They know how to
| do that kind of engineering calculation, as well as all the
| weight & balance calcs needed to e.g. move ballast in unusual
| ways, etc.
| morei wrote:
| Amusingly enough, the tugs not uncommonly have more thrust.
|
| Large ships are _heavily_ optimized for the common case, which
| is sailing at about 13.5 knots. They take a very long time to
| get up to speed because their propulsion is sized to be just
| enough to overcome resistance at their typical cruising speed.
|
| Consequently, it would be difficult to get another ship up to
| any sort of speed in a short enough distance. Even if you
| could, the the momentum is absurdly high so it's much more
| likely that any sort of chain would snap, or the attachment
| point would break than that the aground ship would actually
| move.
|
| (The aground ship has a deadweight of approx 200,000 tonnes)
| emmelaich wrote:
| Related - These Mini-Ships Teach Pilots How to Navigate Major
| Waterways
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEDrFiQq1_k
|
| Looks like fun actually!
| NamTaf wrote:
| Expanding on your comment, it's analogous to torque vs speed
| in cars. You wouldn't use a Ferrari to tow just because it
| has a high top speed and lots of top-end power. You'd use
| something with high torque down low and good gearing.
|
| Similarly, tugs use different propeller setups (e.g. ducted
| props for extra power, or vectored systems such as azimuth
| thrusters or cyclorotors for extra manuverability), which
| just cause extra drag if all you're doing is cruising at a
| fixed speed throughout oceans.
|
| A big container ship trying to tow something is not unlike
| having a high-speed racecar spin its wheels. It's not
| designed to put that torque down at low speed and lift a big
| trailing mass.
| ragebol wrote:
| How does a huge ship like that get stuck in that orientation wrt.
| the canal? These things don't really turn on a dime I presume.
|
| Edit: Go to https://www.myshiptracking.com/ and use the Playback
| button with timestamp 23/03/2021 06:15:00 to see the ship
| drifting left and right.
| mzs wrote:
| Thanks for describing how the playback feature works, there's
| another vessel two back that ran into trouble as well:
|
| https://gfycat.com/JointFirmGrayling
| donalhunt wrote:
| From one of the twitter threads on the topic: "power blackout".
|
| So likely the ship was uncontrollable and drifted into the
| bank. There seems to be evidence that there its bulbous bow is
| embedded in the bank.
| akg_67 wrote:
| As I shared in another comment according to NHK News in
| Japan, poor visibility due to sand storm was the cause. It is
| a Japanese ship operated by Taiwanese company.
| ragebol wrote:
| Aha, that explains. The sheer inertia of a ship like this,
| almost unimaginable. That'll jam that bow in there good.
| brnt wrote:
| Taiwanese company blocks much of Chinas trade with Europe at a
| moment where there has been sabbre rattling. Wonderful
| coincidence!
| Kye wrote:
| Can anyone familiar with shipping offer an explanation for this
| track other than the funny, obvious, and probably wrong one?
|
| https://twitter.com/KyeFox/status/1374513117326024705
| soneil wrote:
| Only familiar with much, much smaller boats - but that's not
| unusual for station-keeping (or anchoring, but I expect a moon-
| shaped track at anchor). To be super clear, I'm extrapolating
| from 30ft boats, I could be wildly wrong in any of this.
|
| In a nutshell you don't stay still, you drift around with wind
| and currents (and breeze-block shaped ships have a lot of
| windage!). So you drift off station, motor back, rinse repeat.
| ('Station' is usually a box you're bound to rather than a point
| you try to hit, for exactly this reason)
|
| Anchor isn't much different - a cargo ship in an anchorage
| isn't a static fixture, it's realistically the world's largest
| windsock.
|
| Compare another ship waiting in the same area -
| https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000 Hit the "Track"
| button on the sidebar (under the photo of the ship), and you'll
| see a similar history. Theirs is tighter, but that could simply
| be a product of it getting crowded. I'd expect EG's arrival to
| be more planned, less chaotic - arrive, assemble the convoy,
| join the queue and go.
| sabas_ge wrote:
| It's the GPS position transmitted via AIS, it's like your phone
| while you are in a static position but on a bigger scale...
| konjin wrote:
| https://twitter.com/MarineTraffic/status/1374650543344390147...
|
| It's pretty insane that I can track what ship is where on the
| other side of the planet in real time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| too bad airplane don't have the same ability, otherwise, we'd
| know where MH370 went
| konjin wrote:
| They do: https://www.flightradar24.com/
|
| They even found debris from it in the places they expected:
| https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/searching-for-
| mh370-two-y...
| pjerem wrote:
| Not sure if you are trolling or not but ...
| https://www.flightradar24.com/
| mattashii wrote:
| > too bad airplane don't have the same ability
|
| Airplanes have ADS-B, which is quite similar to the maritime
| AIS location broadcasting. The only significant difference is
| that satellite AIS coverage is high and ships don't go fast,
| so having no signal for a few hours is not as big a problem
| for ships.
|
| ADS-B satellite coverage is currently provided by (at least)
| the iridium constellation, but that only came into effect in
| 2016.
| al3xandre wrote:
| Three questions:
|
| 1. How easy would it be to pay a container ship's captain to do
| that ? 2. Can you then bet on short term commodity futures to
| benefits from the event significantly? 3. Do you think this is
| what's happening ?
| willyt wrote:
| It was caused by a power blackout meaning no-one was in control
| of the ship. It's possible someone pulled a breaker or
| something but I don't know how easy that would be to do in a
| way that would not look like sabotage.
| almostarockstar wrote:
| This sounds like a great action/drama film.
| gonzo wrote:
| Normally the ship's captain isn't in-charge in the canal. The
| Suez Port Authority has pilots you have to hire for that.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Correct; I believe the canal's authority has liability here
| as they provide the mandatory pilot for the duration of the
| transit.
| jandrese wrote:
| The captain may still be liable if the ship ended up like
| that due to mechanical failure.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Certainly in cases of collision the owners of the vessel
| retain liability even with a Suez Canal pilot on board[0].
| It's possible that they then have a claim against the canal
| company for provision of negligent piloting, but I don't
| know that.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2020/10/when-
| commo... - and the (linked) full judgment is also
| interesting; the pilot of the ship that caused the
| collision wasn't doing a good job on that occasion!
| raptorraver wrote:
| I've understood that (in Finland at least) the pilot's aren't
| actually steering the ship but giving instructions for the
| captain.
| _nickwhite wrote:
| Update: According to Reuters, the ship has been partially
| refloated & moved so other traffic can go past.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-suezcanal-ship-rest...
| joncrane wrote:
| Nope, still stuck as of this post. It's easy to check:
|
| https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000
| instakill wrote:
| Assuming the canal remains blocked for 10 - 14 days, what WSB
| moves would you make in the stock market given this scenario?
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Any public companies with large Mi-26 fleets?
| ohples wrote:
| One thing I learned from reading about this is that Rotterdam is
| the destination of a large amount of China to Europe trade.
|
| Is there really not a suitably developed Mediterranean port
| closer to Suez? Is there work on one?
| jaggirs wrote:
| I think the issue here is how well connected such a port would
| be. From Rotterdam you can go all the way to Germany through a
| river. Not sure you could do the same from a port in the
| Mediterranean, as the terrain tends to be mountainous there.
| posterboy wrote:
| The issue is that north north west europe is densely
| populated, and well developed, metropolitan as you say,
| highly urbanized and comparably wealthy.
|
| Add to that, the Dutch have been a maritime nation at least
| since colonial times.
|
| While one of the biggest ports lies at the footsteps of
| Athens, the economic power of neighbourg countries is not
| quite as strong.
| margalabargala wrote:
| The Danube river flows into the Black Sea from Germany,
| though I have no idea if it's navigable for ships of the same
| size as would go to Rotterdam. Nothing from the
| Mediterranean.
| awhitby wrote:
| There's no reason to do this. Shipping cost is
| disproportionately affected by loading/unloading, and every
| other type of transport is more expensive (per mile travelled).
| So what you actually want to do is take the ship as close as
| possible to the goods' final destination, and minimize trucking
| and rail and so on.
|
| I'm not sure exactly where the "economic center" of Europe is
| but maps of gridded GDP [0] or nightlights [1] suggests
| Rotterdam is a pretty good choice.
|
| (Also don't forget the Alps.)
|
| [0] https://bit.ly/31h1hsK [1]
| https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2012/03/Night_ligh...
| er4hn wrote:
| Any fans of What We Do in the Shadows here? Getting strong vibes
| from the second season when Colin Robinson parks his car across
| the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel.
| Nekhrimah wrote:
| Footage of the backlog:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhSzxe0FuIE
|
| Presumably in the Gulf of Suez.
| [deleted]
| biosed wrote:
| Video was removed.
| u678u wrote:
| Its just incredible how big the world is and how much stuff is
| getting produced and consumed. These ships are huge.
| tilolebo wrote:
| https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374674714854105093?...
|
| The Twitter account of this transit services agency provides some
| updates.
|
| I already saw multiple French news sites stating that the canal
| has been unblocked, but apparently that's not true.
|
| I wonder where that news came from.
| tilolebo wrote:
| https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374634054096723970?...
|
| 2 dredges and a larger tug underway to help unblocking the Ever
| Given.
| tilolebo wrote:
| 1st dredger "10th of Ramadan" has arrived, 2nd dredger
| "Mashhour" should be on the scene very soon too.
|
| The tide is at its highest level of the day. Expecting some
| action in the next hour!
| darness-2 wrote:
| Shoul've expanded their canal, just like panama did recently
| astura wrote:
| They did!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Area_Development_Pr...
| swilliamsio wrote:
| When the canals expand, the ships get bigger too.
| macintux wrote:
| They just did (2015?), that's the only reason this one was able
| to fit through.
| sbhn wrote:
| Its time to create a canal through israel
| [deleted]
| devpbrilius wrote:
| Amazing, it's Panama channel China resident.
| jandrese wrote:
| According to the Twitter feed there is now a excavator trying to
| dig out the bow. It really shows off the scale as the excavator
| looks like a tiny toy next to the massive container ship.
|
| https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1374468169784459267/pho...
| michelb wrote:
| I see a Pixar movie about an excavator being written..
| testfoobar wrote:
| Picture from another angle. Not sure if it is authentic or
| photoshopped:
|
| https://twitter.com/lookner/status/1374580367269711875
| indeedmug wrote:
| If you scroll down there is another picture from a distance
| that shows the digger. The shop is just massive. Explains why
| it's still stuck right now.
| lawl wrote:
| https://www.fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=981f442a7e8e35.
| ..
|
| I'm no expert in detecting shoops. But ELA looks fine to me,
| I don't think it's photoshopped.
| danaos wrote:
| Uhhh it's in Wikipedia's "largest container ships" list! [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ship...
| ggregoire wrote:
| Anyone knows why all those Korean, Swiss and Taiwanese ships
| are registered in Panama instead of their own country?
| martin_a wrote:
| Just another tax evasion scheme.
| samizdis wrote:
| It's a system called registering a ship under a "flag of
| convenience" [1].
|
| Covers lots of questionable business practices, from
| employment conditions/health and safety, to tax etc.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience
|
| Edited to add this (which I did not know, but think it
| interesting) from the Wikipedia article:
|
| _The modern practice of ships being registered in a
| foreign country [ie, a flag of convenience] began in the
| 1920s in the United States when shipowners seeking to serve
| alcohol to passengers during Prohibition registered their
| ships in Panama. Owners soon began to perceive advantages
| in terms of avoiding increased regulations and rising labor
| costs and continued to register their ships in Panama even
| after Prohibition ended._
| Shivetya wrote:
| True, but it is hard to get the scale of some ships until a
| real world item people are familiar with is close enough for
| a comparison.
|
| I remember driving up to one of the battleship memorials as a
| child and it just seemed like this big gray mountain at the
| end of the street.
| noarchy wrote:
| >Uhhh it's in Wikipedia's "largest container ships" list!
|
| Off-topic, but does anyone else find it odd to find fillers
| like "umm" and "uhh" to be typed out on sites like HN or
| reddit?
| stransky wrote:
| Ummmm...no?
| [deleted]
| reducesuffering wrote:
| No it contributes to more natural conversation,
| illustrating the commenter's thought process.
| croes wrote:
| Should the process not be completed before you hit
| "submit". There is no need to simulate a live
| conversation.
| noarchy wrote:
| I didn't think that "natural" conversation was an actual
| goal on HN. You see this particularly in the way that
| humour (among other things) is often downvoted and
| discouraged.
| userbinator wrote:
| ...and as the article says, "Furthermore, some of the world's
| main waterways such as the Suez Canal and Singapore Strait
| also restrict the maximum dimensions of a ship that can pass
| through them.", which explains why the list consists of large
| fleets of ships all almost exactly the same size.
| codewench wrote:
| Much like Panamax being the largest ship size which can
| traverse the Panama canal, there's a corresponding
| Suezmax[1]. Sort of like the old story of the Space
| Shuttle's SRB size being dictated by old Roman road design,
| it's interesting how modern design is influenced by
| historical limitations we might not consider.
| leoedin wrote:
| One of the main roads near where I live is a Roman road.
| It's fascinating that the new buildings being built along
| it have their design constrained, in some way, by a
| decision made 2000 years ago.
| smilespray wrote:
| 2000 years? Think about how frequently we're hampered by
| limitations set 13.8 billion years ago...
| nindalf wrote:
| Not sure if that's true.
| https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/4064/how-fair-
| is-t...
| m4rtink wrote:
| The Shuttle SRB design still was dictated at least in
| part by the segments being transported by rail - each
| individual segment could be only as heavy, wide and long
| as the cobined stretch of railway from the factory would
| allow.
|
| It influences other rockets as well - for example the
| Proton:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(rocket_family)
|
| The long thin tanks you see mounted on the first stage
| are not drop tanks or additional boosters, its the tanks
| holding the first stage fuel, with the central core
| holding all the oxidzer.
|
| Thats because the core stage is limitted in width by what
| you can ship to Bayokonur by rail, especialy IIRC one
| specific rail tunnel on the route. So they ship the core
| stage and the additional fuel tanks on separate rail cars
| and then bolt them in place on the cosmodrome.
|
| In similar manner Falcon 9 is limitted to 3.9 m of width
| as that is the maximum you can ship over the US highway
| network without special care.
|
| If you want to go bigger, you need special aircraft and
| barges, or build the thing in place like it is currently
| being done with the SpaceX Starhip.
| denysvitali wrote:
| I'm surprised Docker is not on that list
| GhostVII wrote:
| _In 2016, Prokopowicz and Berg-Andreassen defined a container
| ship with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 TEU as a Very Large
| Container Ship (VLCS), while that with a capacity greater
| than 20,000 TEU as an Ultra Large Container Ship (ULCS)_
|
| They are gonna run out of larger adjectives pretty soon.
| masklinn wrote:
| Screen resolutions have not and they are way worse.
|
| Ship sizes can just reuse that replacing "graphics array"
| with "container ship" e.g. Quad Size Extended Container
| Ship.
| moonbug wrote:
| they just need to take a lead from astronomers
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telesc
| o...
| _Microft wrote:
| Astronomers to the rescue!
|
| https://xkcd.com/1294/
| ygra wrote:
| That's been the case for display resolutions for a while as
| well ... although most of them can probably be parsed by
| the regex [UWXVQ]+GA.
| aasasd wrote:
| Just call Capcom.
|
| "Super Container Ship II' Hyper Turbo Extra Special
| Champion Edition HD Remix".
|
| Btw, there's a similar conundrum with large telescope
| projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26333391
| ornornor wrote:
| You forgot "Pro", which is what makes a variant the
| bigger one.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I thought Pro meant remove all of the ports, and make it
| ultra thin
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Removing all of the ports could really be a problem for a
| ship!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Nah, there's a dongle to connect to the dock without a
| port
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Almost like a Samsung phone.
|
| Large container ship 20 Ultra Plus 5G Fan edition
| oblio wrote:
| Samsung at least uses 1 qualifier per device. S21 Plus,
| S21 Ultra.
|
| Apple's 12 Pro Max, though...
| berkes wrote:
| The phone gets so hot, it needs a fan?
| Tepix wrote:
| Like the Nubia Red Magic phones you mean?
| KSteffensen wrote:
| Same with IC size. Started with SSI (Small Scale
| Integration) then MSI (Medium Scale Integration), LSI
| (Large Scale Integration) and finally VLSI (Very Large
| Scale Integration) in the early 1980ies. There was some
| talk of ULSI (Ultra Large Scale Integration), but
| thankfully this never caught on.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit#ULS
| I,_WSI,_...
| viraptor wrote:
| While it's not SI yet, they could still use Hella
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hella#SI_prefix
|
| I'm all for Hella Container Ship
| dylan604 wrote:
| Now, hella is just a modifier. Hella Big Container Ship
| dwarfs Hella Small Excavator
| [deleted]
| implements wrote:
| Well in frequency terminology they've still got Super
| Large, Extremely Large and Terrifically Large left!
| Iv wrote:
| I feel so much empathy for "the little excavator that could"
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| I feel empathy for the driver. Worst job in the world.
| soheil wrote:
| How is it that something like this just happened now? The canal
| has been open for decades, is it that they probably loaded one
| extra container on a ship like this and that was the straw that
| broke the camel's back?
| bombcar wrote:
| Ship lost power and began to drift and got wedged in.
|
| If necessary I guess they'll have to unload it somehow.
| gumby wrote:
| Classic DOS attack. Cui bono?
| detritus wrote:
| I don't think I'd ever considered prior to now how much more
| economic it would be to release "The one nuclear bomb
| [TerroristOrganisation] can afford to muster" in a shipping
| choke-point, rather than a city.
|
| So, another thing to worry about :)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Dozen or so ships would be enough to blockade both Suez and
| Panama... That would cause substantial damage to global
| shipping industry... Not even that expensive. Hundred or two
| hundred million would do...
| cycomanic wrote:
| Panama is not that busy. A much better target would be the
| kiel canal (Nord- Ostsee Kanal in German), which is the
| busiest waterway in the world 25000 ships yearly vs 19000
| ships for the Suez vs 12000 for Panama.
| jandrese wrote:
| For the Suez Canal a huge bomb is just going to make it
| bigger and easier to navigate in one spot.
|
| Blow up the locks for the Panama Canal and you have some
| seriously inconvenienced shipping companies.
|
| But even in both cases the result is that they have to take
| the long way around. It makes the shipping slower and more
| expensive, but it was a tiny fraction of your costs to begin
| with so most companies survive just fine.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| I suspect it's not the use of the bomb that is the biggest
| concern.
|
| I would think someone with a bomb on some kind of bulk
| Hazmat carrier and the threat of blowing it up would shut
| down traffic for a lot longer. Nobody is going to want to
| get close to do anything about it.
|
| LNG or Oil are the two I can think of, but there's probably
| a lot of other bulk Hazmat carriers.
| gumby wrote:
| The major canals aren't around big population centers so
| blowing something like that up wouldn't make a huge
| impact. Also due to the structure of a canal (limited
| blast containment; most of a ship is above the surface)
| the actual damage would be limited.
| onion2k wrote:
| _For the Suez Canal a huge bomb is just going to make it
| bigger and easier to navigate in one spot._
|
| A huge bomb to one side of the canal would displace rock
| and mud in to the channel and make it shallower. That would
| be enough to close it to large ships until it could be
| dredged again.
|
| Although, if terrorists really wanted to wreak havoc in the
| canal they could scuttle a large ship while it's sailing in
| it. That would necessitate dismantling and removing the
| entire thing.
|
| I'm surprised no one has made a movie of that.
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet : some ships
| were stuck for eight years after the 1967 war closed the
| canal at both ends with sunk ships.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > In October 1967, the officers and crews of all fourteen
| ships met on the Melampus to found the "Great Bitter Lake
| Association" which provided mutual support. Crew members
| continued to regularly meet on board their ships,
| organized social events, founded a yachting club and held
| the "Bitter Lake Olympic Games" to complement the 1968
| Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Life boat races were
| arranged and soccer games were played on the largest
| ship, the MS Port Invercargill, while church services
| were held on the West German motorship Nordwind and
| movies were shown on the Bulgarian freighter Vasil
| Levsky.[2] The Swedish Killara had a pool.[3]
|
| > In time, it was possible to reduce the number of crew
| members on board the ships, and in 1969 the ships were
| gathered into several groups to further reduce the number
| of crew necessary for their upkeep. Those crew that were
| left to maintain the vessels were rotated every three
| months. In 1972, the last crew members of the German
| ships were finally sent home, with the maintenance of the
| ships left to a Norwegian company.
|
| They even introduced a postal system!
| gumby wrote:
| > They even introduced a postal system!
|
| That is pretty cool.
|
| I remember back in the early 90s attending a CEBIT trade
| show (at the time perhaps the largest computing show in
| the world -- the show floors covered acres) and being
| astonished to see that the Bundespost delivered mail,
| including the usual trade show flyers, to each display
| booth. Yes, uniformed postal workers wheeling the usual
| delivery carts up and down the aisles.
|
| I think we forget how important transporting physical
| media (usually just paper) was back in those days. The
| penny post used to deliver twice a day in cities. Now I
| check my mail every 4-6 weeks and there's rarely anything
| important in it.
| glaucon wrote:
| Suez Canal was out of use from 1967 to 1975. It wasn't great
| but the sun continued to rise.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Isn't Sisi trying to build another one?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Hah if only someone set up issuezcanalstillblocked.com and
| you could enter Unix epoch
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| They'd be crappy terrorists because shipping delays don't
| cause terror the way real terrorism does.
| willyt wrote:
| No they'd be geniuses because they would cause economic
| losses to powerful people a lot like how the good Friday
| agreement came about quite quickly after the IRA broke
| every office window in the finicial district of London with
| a truckload of fertiliser. No-one was killed and glaziers
| rates went up 10 times for a few months. It caused a big
| disruption to the financial district but most ordinary
| people weren't that bothered by it. Actual terrorism,
| chopping peoples heads off or letting off bombs in the
| metro doesn't acheive anything, it just pisses ordinary
| people off and makes them want the government to bomb you
| right back.
| donpott wrote:
| Which specific IRA bombing are you referring to there? If
| it's the Baltic Exchange Bombing, 3 people died and 91
| were injured.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Exchange_bombing
| willyt wrote:
| You're right, I misremembered. I'm not saying that the
| IRA weren't bad, they killed more people than 9/11, but
| they learnt that killing random people was bad for PR and
| adapted thier tactics to economic targets in the 90's.
| I'm from London and I lived through the IRA bombing
| campaign of the 90's and the various ISIS attacks of the
| 2000's. The IRA made me annoyed, angry maybe but not
| terrorised, they phoned in warnings and thier attacks
| were mostly inconvenient. The 7/7 suicide bombers were a
| completely different intent, they were out to kill as
| many random people as possible, the IRA weren't by that
| stage.
| dmos62 wrote:
| > letting off bombs in the metro doesn't acheive anything
|
| Well, it terrorizes. Terror not achieving anything is a
| bold statement. Maybe you'd prefer to argue that it's not
| efficient or productive.
| willyt wrote:
| But who cares if it terrorises? I mean, I care if my tube
| train seems scarier than last week but I'm irrelevant. If
| the goal of Islamic terrorists is to have America or
| Britain change its foreign policy towards Islamic
| countries, I think that Islamic terrorism has achieved
| the opposite of that. If the IRA's goal was to change the
| position of the British government from 'we don't
| negotiate with terrorists' then the bombs that had a big
| impact on the financial centre of the UK had the effect
| of changing that policy. I'm arguing that terrorising
| normal people only has the effect of turning normal
| people against your cause, much like the Blitz which was
| designed to terrorise the population didn't make the
| British want to surrender to Germany, and when Britain
| did gain the upper hand, the British public were happy
| for the British state to visit worse destruction on
| German cities.
| [deleted]
| sytringy05 wrote:
| How about a shipping choke point and a city at the same time:
| https://xkcd.com/748/
| tpmx wrote:
| There could be real values in faking a technical outage and
| then getting stuck.
|
| I don't claim to understand the global shipping dynamics, but I
| do see that there's lots of frustrated ship crews with nowhere
| to go, because of the pandemic.
| qrbLPHiKpiux wrote:
| The cynic sitting on my right shoulder just whispered in my
| ear, "just think, they did this deliberately."
| ruytlm wrote:
| Starts to show why China is so keen on the Belt and Road
| initiative, given that it's essentially ring-fenced in by US
| allies.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Seeing how it is positioned, the worst case is that they will not
| be able to move it and they will have to remove some of the load.
| This might take a day or three depending on how difficult it is
| going to get a crane and a ship positioned to take the load off.
| roschdal wrote:
| What does this blockage of the canal mean for investments in oil
| cargo ships? Will the rates for oil cargo ships increase because
| they will sail around Africa instead?
| brisky wrote:
| I think this could possibly be the black swan event.
| speexmex wrote:
| Experts said this will be solved in at most 3 days.
| dmos62 wrote:
| It would be ironic if this spiralled into a global crisis, that
| spiraled into something else, until, finally, we're all cave
| people again. I think conspiracy theorists are having a field
| day.
| morei wrote:
| Best summary to date:
| https://lloydslist.maritimeintelligence.informa.com/LL113622...
|
| TL;DR: Ship has not been refloated, "an initial investigation has
| ruled out any suggestion of mechanical or technical failure".
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