Unjamming Tanker in Suez Canal

There's a decent road on the West side

So it should only take a few hours to get a few pile drivers there. A few piles driven even into sand next to the concrete forming the west bank should do the trick.

If it was as trivial a process as you imply then I'd expect they would've done it already. The mass and tidal forces of this beaching are far greater than getting a 4WD off-roading vehicle out of a snowbank or mud pit by using a winch and buried anchor.

Then again, this might be a simple logistic problem of getting all of the parts (piles, drivers, crane and crew) to the correct bank for installation to make some solid anchors. Anchor points, cabling and winches may yet be the answer that solves this problem. On day one people will understandably first try the quick fixes. It is only day five of this log jam.

At work for pole tests, they used a "deadman," which was a pole or piling section buried several feet deep and crossways to the tension that would be put on it. Soil is better than sand I admit, but these things didn't move under the loads we used. Then there is a question: How much tension can a tug put on the cable versus what a block & tackle can?

Well, after hearing the loads involved in that video found by SE, my post can be ignored!

Another factor in this debacle is the tidal flow through the canal. Four times a day the water flow direction will change. The good news is today is a full moon so at high tide the water level will be at a max to lift the vessel. The bad news is today is a full moon so the maximum flow rate will drive the bow into the bank harder.

The problem is the weight and size of the ship.

They are using the ships winches and dozens of tugs,a sand-sucking dredge, bulldozers,and everything possible to free the ship.

They cannot shift the weigh towards the center of the ship,or the concentrated weight may crack the stern wide open and cause more problems,which would result in oil spill,and an even more difficult problem of removing the sunken vessel.

I remember seeing a case where a ship went aground on a sand bar,and the captain ordered all of the bilges to be filled with water at low tide..everyone thought he was crazy,but they did it anyway.

This made the ship sink deeper into the sand,then at high tide,he pumped them all out and the ship was free.

I don't know if this is feasible in this case or not.

The basic problem is that the canal is too narrow.

It was first opened in 1869,and did not foresee the huge ships of today.

With the huge amount of losses incurred daily to world wide traffic,it should be addressed by a world wide effort to build a new canal.

Sure it would cost billions,but probably one year would pay for it.

A new canal would be cheaper,while leaving the present one open during construction and using it as an emergency bypass for the new one when it is completed.

The present form cannot accommodate the largest oil tankers,so a lot of lost possible revenue is bypassed.

Look at the new Panama canal for instance.

Meanwhile,China is working on a canal that will take traffic away from Panama.

As you state, this canal is one and a half centuries old. With today's freighters being so large it is long overdue for a canal widening or a freighter size reduction. Since the freighters are so much younger than the canal, I don't fault the canal design.

If they let ships of this length in the canal, it's a no brainer that some will eventually get stuck sideways and block the channel. The solution is, as you say, build another canal that can handle the ever increasing size of ships. These ships are getting so big that I think going around the cape is economically viable. The unit cost per container wouldn't increase that much.

"These ships are getting so big that I think going around the cape is economically viable. The unit cost per container wouldn't increase that much."

I think you're ignoring time in your calculation. If it takes twice as long for the journey you need twice as many ships in your fleet to carry the same volume of goods.

But if one can build a ship twice as long and twice as wide to ignore canal limitations then four times the amount of deck space is available. Likely this will allow even more containers to be stacked higher so more than four times the amount of cargo can be sent by one ship.

This is precisely the type of simple mathematics a bean counter regularly performs that irritates and sometimes enrages engineers. Bean counters focus on the numbers that imply profit while never looking for any numbers that can inflict cost, particularly the probabilities and repercussions of something going wrong.

I hope Ever Green's shipping insurance gets docked for extrication costs and for at least some of the added costs to the other delayed shippers. This applies pressure directly on the only metric bean counters notice, money.

...so in order to do what Randall suggests, all one has to do is blow the mechanical drawings up by a factor of √2. Yeah, right.

One thing that dawns on me is the ratio of length of the vessel divided by the width of the canal is probably the major factor here. If that ratio is less than one half, the vessel can still get stuck on a bank but it will not block traffic. This small of a vessel can even turn around in the canal. In your small canal image that vessel/canal ratio is about one and thus complete blockage is possible but contact with only one bank is likely. If this ratio exceeds the square root of two then a grounding on a bank must be at an acute angle. Currents through the canal will no longer drive a beached bow as hard into the bank. The length of Ever Given was almost the worst length for a vessel getting stuck at this canal location.

I don't see why everybody is trying to blame the ship and captain for this problem, the responsibility lies with the canal management team who should have had tugboats accompanying the ship to keep it straight in the high winds that were present at the time...Ships pay a lot of money for safe passage through this canal, it's up to the canal management to see that they get what they pay for...The ships are limited in control in certain circumstances that are well known to anybody involved in canal passage...The Panama canal is much more narrow in places than the Suez...

<...much more narrow...> ?

That picture shows a canal lock. The Suez canal has no locks between the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

Clearly you do not know what responsibilities, if any, the Suez canal management has about support or weather warnings.

Yes, this canal does not have any locks. But again, that is not the Suez canal.

Some more narrow canals are so narrow they get covered, and paved so few remember it was ever a canal.

..."SCA owns the Suez Canal and all areas, buildings and equipment pertaining thereto. SCA issues the Rules of Navigation, specifies the tolls for the use of the canal and collects them. The tolls are expressed in XDR and collected in USD, GBP, EUR and other currencies. In 2008, the total revenue in tolls was 5,381.9 million USD for the passage of a total of 21,415 vessels - resulting in an average toll of $251,314.5 USD per vessel.

SCA is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the Suez Canal, for the safety of the traffic and for all other matters relating thereto. "...

Seems pretty clear to me...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Authority

I knew you could actually support your opinion if I pushed you. (I still wonder why it took so long.)

As usual, "the devil will be in the details." Did the Ever Given captain ignore high wind warnings before entering the canal and were such warnings given? Does the SCA guarantee, provide or require tug escorts for vessels as long as the Ever Given? Does the SCA guarantee tug and/or dredge support immediately after a beaching or within X hours of a report? Does SCA financial liability occur only after a fixed amount of canal blockage time and was that exceeded?

There are far too many critical details to say who, if anyone, is to blame. This canal blockage might just be a very big, expensive accident and learning lesson.

"

• No Tugs: The Ever Given didn’t employ tug boats, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, while the two slightly smaller container ships immediately ahead did.
• Escorts Not Mandatory: The Cosco Galaxy, a container ship marginally smaller than the Ever Given, was immediately ahead and appears to have travelled at a similar speed, though with a tugboat. The one ahead of the Cosco, the Al Nasriyah, also had an escort. The escorts are not mandatory, according to the Suez authority’s rules of navigation, though the authority can require it for ships if they deem it necessary."

The Suez authority should have required tug boat escorts in the high winds that were present...The pilot steering the boat is provided by the Suez authority....

https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/over-300-ships-now-stranded-at-the-suez-canal-problem-looking-more-like-pilot-error

So the Ever Given was piloted by an SCA pilot, this takes the onus off of Ever Green. It also makes a lot of sense to have a local pilot knowledgeable of the water depths, currents and any other treacherous effects.

Other container ships did use escort tugs but they are not mandatory unless SCA deems them so. This begs the question of why the other ships used escorts but not the Ever Given. Presumably the pilot did have permission from higher up SCA authorities to proceed without escorts. An unexpected mechanical failure on the Ever Given (thrusters?) may have provided false hope of safe passage or significantly higher than anticipated winds could be the actual root cause. Who knows, a previously unknown submerged sink hole may have spun the ship into the bank.

Regardless of the actual root cause, I'm certain that pilot will not be piloting in the near future, if ever again.

Regardless of what the cause was it seems that the pilots, yes there was 2 Egyptian pilots on board, should have required probably 2 tug boats, one front one back, to facilitate navigation in the high winds....the wind loading on a vessel with such a large flat surface is well known, and the high winds are common in that area....Now whether the captain should have demanded it or the pilots should have required it, I'm thinking both, but the lions share of the liability should be with the SCA since they should have more expert knowledge of local conditions...there have been 10 groundings in the past, though this is the largest ship to date, so it's not without precedent...It might be there is a wind speed limit that multiplied by the square footage of the exposed flat surface determines a go/no go passage allowance...They probably could have avoided the whole thing by parking for a few hours and waiting for the wind to die down a bit...

Yes, local conditions can ''trump'' off-site theory many times...

Apparently, off-loading (some of the) cargo to the side-road was not a viable option...

More specifically, such things as windy conditions and sediment transport come in play as well.

Pumping out as much water from the ship as possible will reduce the ''draft'', for a start...

If that is not enough, then (vacuuming-type) dredging along both sides of the ship should re-float it, at least...

Clearly, the canal is not adequately monitored for (keel-clearances), but should have been (standard operating procedure)...

...(i.e.: if the canal water was deep enough, they would not have had to wait for High Tide to start pull the ship back parallel to the canal centerline)...

In part, it's a sort of ''inverse'' of a ''low-overhead'' situation...

The canal is constantly being worked on widening and deepening by dredging machines, that's how they were able to get there so quickly...It's my understanding they have freed the aft portion of the boat and expect to have the front free soon....they were able to lighten the load a little by pumping some 9,000 tons of water out of the hull....

Just waiting for high tide...too bad they don't have a gate at one end of the canal to raise the water level when needed...

latest news here is that it is now free to move.

The maritime guys might have better knowledge, but using tugs and towlines has some "give" that would not be possible to achieve with the fixed block and tackle idea. Also, a tug's propeller pushing tons of water per seconds achieves significant pull force and can be re-directed simply by moving the tug to a different angle.

Even now that it is free, I suspect some days of inspections and checking. Those ships are not intended to be supported at both ends with an almost full load in the middle.

I hope you are right but what I just heard is that the ship moved but is not free to move. They hope to achieve more movement at the next high tide. What worries me is with it being a full moon these are spring tides. If they don't get it out now they may not for two weeks.

There is also the question of possible damage to the ship that has yet to be assessed.

You are correct! The ship is free! Now this ship must be inspected for damage before it can continue past the canal but shipping through the Suez canal has restarted. Hooray!

What is the real name of this ship? EVERGIVEN or EVERGREEN? Are those big letters on the side just photochopped? If so, who is responsible?

Ever Given is the name of the ship owned by Ever Green.

Thanks. Not long after I asked that, my wife explained it, too.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6783820978490228736-VZTU

LOL

Egypt holding Ever Given ransom for $900 million...

"CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian authorities impounded a massive cargo vessel that blocked the Suez Canal last month amid a financial dispute with its owner, the canal chief and a judicial official said Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie said the hulking Ever Given would not be allowed to leave the country until a compensation amount is settled on with the vessel’s Japanese owner, Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd.

“The vessel is now officially impounded,” he told Egypt’s state-run television late Monday. “They do not want to pay anything.”

There was no immediate comment from the vessel’s owner.

Rabei did not say how much money the canal authority was seeking. However, a judicial official said it demanded at least $900 million. The state-run Ahram daily also reported the $900 million figure.

That amount takes into account the salvage operation, costs of stalled canal traffic and lost transit fees for the week that the Ever Given blocked the canal."...

https://www.woodtv.com/news/international/suez-canal-chief-vessel-impounded-amid-financial-dispute/

Continuing fallout and who's buying what from whom....The good news is the traffic jam in the Suez canal is now cleared....The bad news is that everything is all screwed up now because of the delay, not to mention that the Ever Given is still being held with all its cargo....I don't see why they don't just release it and charge Evergreen higher passage rates until some agreed settlement is reached....This approach by canal authorities seems rather heavy handed and a blow to public relations and the industry as a whole...I mean who are they punishing and why? Haven't we all suffered enough already?

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ever-givens-arrest-and-manifest-and-the-impact-on-us-importers

This is because corporations (and other underhanded organizations {Hey Bernie! I hope your new cell is warm enough for you!}) are notorious for declaring bankruptcy instead of paying unexpected bills.