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The giant ship stuck in the Suez Canal has been freed. Here’s what’s next

Herb Scribner  1 hr ago

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The giant cargo ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal was partially freed on Monday, potentially setting up a return to moving traffic in one of the world’s busiest waterways, The New York Times reports.

© Associated Press In this photo released by Suez Canal Authority, the Ever Given, a Panama-flagged cargo ship is accompanied by Suez Canal tugboats as it moves in the Suez Canal, Egypt, Monday, March 29, 2021.

What about the Suez Canal?

Late last week, a large container ship turned sideways and got stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking traffic for all the ships behind it, as I wrote for the Deseret News.

• A sandstorm and high winds pushed the ship off course, which led to it being wedged in the canal, CNN reports.
• Specialist teams were brought in to move the ship, according to Reuters.

How did the Suez Canal ship get freed?

Salvage teams worked all of last week and over the weekend — for five days and five nights straight — to get the stuck ship back afloat on the water, according to The New York Times.

• Per The New York Times, it was the moon and the tides that made the biggest difference. Officials said water levels ballooned overnight, which — thanks to the digging by the salvage teams — allowed the boat to hit the water again and begin to float.
• Officials cautioned that there’s still a complicated process underway to get the ship moving again. But for now, they have high confidence that traffic will resume in the canal, The New York Times reports.

Reactions to the Suez Canal update

• President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said: “Egyptians have succeeded today in ending the crisis of the stuck ship in the Suez Canal despite the great complexities surrounding this situation in every aspect.”
• Peter Berdowski, the chief executive of Royal Boskalis Westminster, told The New York Times: “The ship is like a giant whale that we have to slide off the beach, back in the water. ... “We shouldn’t start cheering just yet.”

What’s next for the stuck ship?

Officials still have to get the ship moved. That’s a big deal.

• After that, authorities are investigating the cause for the ship becoming wedged in the canal. Officials suggested that one reason the ship ran aground was because of a sandstorm and high winds. Some Egyptian officials suggested human error may be to blame, according to the New York Post.

Cargo ship the Ever Given freed from the Suez Canal

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(21) Cargo ship the Ever Given freed from the Suez Canal - YouTube

Cargo ship the Ever Given freed from the Suez Canal

The massive cargo ship the Ever Given has been dislodged from the Suez Canal after being wedged for close to a week. The 400-metre-long cargo ship, one of the largest in operation in the world, was successfully re-floated a short time ago, according to shipping monitors. The Suez Canal is one of the world’s most strategically important shipping routes and one of the highest traffic routes. The blockade of the canal had major trade ramifications including a dip in the oil price, but after 12 tugboats and land-clearing crews worked day and night to dislodge the ship, the Ever Given is expected to resume its journey.

 

Ever Given un-wedged from resting spot in Suez Canal

Adriana Navarro  1 hr ago

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The container ship Ever Given, that has been stuck for nearly a week after running aground in the Suez Canal during high winds, has been reported to be largely freed from it resting place.

The stern (rear) of the ship was unwedged from the bank of the canal on Monday, reported CNN. Though the bow (front) of the ship remains stuck.

"The container ship began to float successfully after responding to the pulling maneuvers," said Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority.

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The tracking map on Vesslefinder.com from late Monday morning, local time, shows the stern of the Ever Given away from the west bank of the Suez Canal. The bow of the ship is still shown pointed and stuck in the east bank of the canal.

Plans are now in place to try to free the bow (front) of the ship later in the day on Monday, using the rising water with the next high tide to help.

Satellite images from last week showed the 1,312-foot-long ship with its bow wedged into the eastern bank at a diagonal across the roughly 656-foot-wide Suez Canal, choking off a crucial maritime trade route in new satellite images released Friday by Maxar Images. The Ever Given, which is operated by the Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine Corp., towered over several tug boats that lined its port side.

"It's a complex technical operation" that will require several attempts to free the vessel, Rabei said in a statement late last week about their efforts.

About 12% of world trade operates through the canal, though concerns are growing over the impact the maritime traffic jam could have on the cost of goods.

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Workers are racing against the clock to fully free the ship in an endeavor that is costing the world economy an estimated $400 million in delayed goods for every hour the waterway remains blocked, according to shipping data and news company Lloyd's List. The London-based shipping news journal estimated that the value of cargo goods passing through the canal every day to be roughly around $9.7 billion -- westbound traffic valuing $5.1 billion daily and eastbound traffic valuing $4.5 billion daily.

The vessel has been stuck since Tuesday, March 23, on its way from China to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands when it reportedly ran aground amid a severe dust storm that caused high winds and poor visibility in the canal. Capt. Nick Sloane, a maritime salvage expert, told the AP that the job could take up to a week.

The job of dislodging the ship had fallen to SMIT Salvage BV, one of the largest salvage companies in the world that provides marine emergency response, wreck removal operations and environmental care services.

AccuWeather Meteorologist John Gresiak said dry and mostly clear weather could be expected in the area over into Tuesday as efforts to free the Ever Given continue.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier, Spectrum, FuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios.

 

What it's really like steering the world's biggest ships

Story by Francesca Street, CNN. Graphic by Sarah-Grace Mankarious and Marco Chacón, CNN  2 hrs ago

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The emergency stop is a familiar maneuver for most motorists. A hazard presents itself in front of the moving vehicle, the driver hits the brakes and grips the steering wheel, the car screeches to a halt, hopefully under full control.



© Soeren Stache/picture alliance/Getty Image The cruise ship Norwegian Star navigates the Suez Canal near Port Said, Egypt, 09 March 2017. The canal joins the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, providing a direct route from Europe to Asia. Dividing Egypt proper from the Sinai peninsula, it is also an artificial border between Asia and Africa. The canal is currently being widened. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB | usage worldwide (Photo by Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images)

But what happens when the vehicle you're driving is the size of a small city and doesn't actually come equipped with brakes?

That's the scenario facing those at the helms of the hundreds of gigantic container and cruise ships in our seas and waterways.

The maneuverability of these titans of the oceans hit the headlines this week when a container ship as long as the Empire State Building is tall became stuck in the Suez Canal, one of the world's most important waterways.

The Ever Given rammed into the side of the waterway on Tuesday when, according to the Suez Canal Authority, it was engulfed by 40-knot winds and low visibility caused by a sandstorm. Amid the struggle to push the ship back on course, scores of vessels have been stuck in a marine traffic snarl up.

© KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images This picture taken on November 17, 2019 shows the Liberia-flagged container ship RDO Concord sailing through Egypt's Suez Canal in the canal's central hub city of Ismailia on the 150th anniversaryx of the canal's inauguration. - One hundred and fifty years after the Suez Canal opened, the international waterway is hugely significant to the economy of modern-day Egypt, which nationalised it in 1956. The canal, dug in the 19th century using "rudimentary tools" and which links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, was opened to navigation in 1869 and was expanded in 2015 to accommodate larger ships. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Given the level of traffic typically seen in the Suez Canal — when there's no pandemic this can be an average of 106 towering container vessels and hulking cruise ships each day — it's perhaps surprising that such an incident doesn't happen more often.

© KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images A container ship navigating the Suez Canal.

So what is it really like to steer the world's biggest ships through the Suez and beyond? CNN Travel spoke to expert mariners to learn more.

A container ship captain's perspective

Captain Yash Gupta helms container vessels that cross the world's oceans. He's been working at sea for almost 20 years.

Gupta calls seafaring life "unpredictable, but very interesting."

"If you are at sea under normal operations it feels quite relaxed," he tells CNN Travel.

But, he adds, you never know what's going to happen next.

"One day, you see the water is just calm and the ship is rock steady. You wake up in the morning and you see it's a storm coming in and waves of maybe five meters, six meters, eight meters. You never know."

The key, he says, is to plan. On board, Gupta heads up around 20 to 25 people at any given time, with crew contracts ranging from four to nine months.

Together with his navigation team, Gupta carefully maps out the route before the voyage begins, factoring in tidal and weather conditions.

Wind is a particularly important consideration for container ships because the stacked containers lends them a dizzying height.

"So you can imagine it's just like a solid wall, which is faced against the wind," says Gupta.

He says the wind effect is uncontrollable because the ship is in water. It's not possible to hit the brakes in the same way you'd stop a moving car.

And just how quickly can you bring a container ship to a stop?

To answer this question, Gupta points to the extremely high demand for shipping cargo.

"Look around yourself, wherever you are sitting -- everything you see, or you touch, has been on a ship in its life."

He says this high demand means container ships are built to accommodate speeding up and slowing down in as short amount of time as possible, to avoid delays.

But the scale of the vessels means the numbers still seem big.

A container ship going from top speed to stop takes about 1.8 miles and between 14 to 16 minutes, says Gupta.

Steering mechanisms vary from ship to ship, with some steered by dials, buttons and levers, but steering wheels are still common -- just not the giant wooden ones that once maneuvered sailing ships.

"It's a steering wheel with a lot of electronics involved," explains Gupta. "When the wheel is turned it gives electronic signals to the rudder which turns as per the command given."

When navigating the Suez, ships travel in convoy and must sail at more or less the same speed as the vessel they're following for the entirety of the roughly 12 to 16 hours it could take to transit the canal.

"You can't just start increasing your speed. Otherwise, the distance between the two vessels will become less and less and less, and then you will ultimately go and collide," says Gupta.

Whether a vessel approaches the Suez Canal from the north or south entryway, it also can't proceed until at least one pilot representing the Suez Canal Authority comes on board.

"They have expertise in transiting through the Suez Canal," explains Gupta. "This pilot has to be on board the vessel and he navigates the vessel. He basically assists the captain."

However, the overall responsibility for safely transiting the vessel still lies with the captain, says Gupta.

Crucially, the Suez pilots are experts in the area's topography. They know the tides, they know the water depth, they're familiar with the width of the canal.

Once ships are transiting the canal, they generally cannot overtake one another, although in some spots the canal is wider, and vessels are permitted to overtake.

Pilots will communicate with one another via radio communication to discuss these maneuvers.

"The pilot says to the other vessel: 'Okay, I'm going to overtake you, you give me some room, you go on one side or you want to increase the speed, decrease the speed,'" explains Gupta.

Also involved in proceedings are what Gupta calls the Suez Canal's equivalent of air traffic control, a subsidiary of the Suez Canal Authority that monitors vessel traffic.

"They have a bigger radar and a bigger navigation equipment. They are monitoring the movement of all the ships as a whole and they coordinate the activities."

Tug boats are currently assisting the Ever Given. Gupta says these small vessels are often used to help large ships navigate the Suez.

"There are some areas in the canal which are narrower than the rest," he says. "Tugs are usually used as 'escorts' in such areas for big ships."

The tug boats travel in tandem with the larger ship and remain available to help should any issues arise.

Cruise ship perspective

Cruise ships transiting the Suez Canal or other narrow waterways experience many of the same challenges as container ships.

For one, they're also extremely tall.

"The higher the vessel, the more windage, the more susceptible you are to the effects of the wind, so that all that has to be taken into consideration," says Captain David Bathgate, who heads up ships for Seabourn Cruise Line, a luxury cruise line owned by Carnival.

Bathgate has decades of seafaring experience under his belt, having worked on general cargo vessels, bulk carriers, container ships and oil tankers over his career.

He's held the title of captain for the past two decades.

"Being in charge of the vessel is a hugely rewarding and satisfying experience," Bathgate tells CNN Travel.

Like Gupta, he works with his on board team to create a voyage plan.

Each plan, says Bathgate, encompasses four steps: appraisal, planning, execution, and monitoring.

Appraisal, he explains, involves ensuring the team has the right charts, navigational warnings and up-to-date meteorological conditions.

"Then you've got the planning, constructing the route itself through the various sections," he explains. "Then you've got the execution, actually doing the job, taking the vessel there."

Finally, monitoring involves keeping tabs on the vessel en route and making sure the ship is on track, and taking any corrective actions if needed.

Bathgate says each voyage plan will be checked by at least four people, including senior navigator officers and an environmental officer.

Before navigating a narrow passage, such as the Suez, Bathgate's team will make sure they are conscious of the waterway's depth, width and what he calls, "any additional navigational hazards within."

These could include shallow areas, bends, corners or banks.

While those topographical conditions aren't likely to change, unanticipated weather can have an unexpected effect.

"The weather is one of the perhaps one of the most important aspects of these passages in constrained waters, in terms of wind speed, and visibility," says Bathgate.

"In the Suez, for example, one of the key hazards would be sandstorms, so very quickly and without warning, very strong winds can creep up with significant quantity of sand and reducing visibility."

Bathgate also notes how ships transit the canal in a numbered convoy, so when they approach the canal, they anchor and await confirmation of their time slot.

"Invariably cruise ships, we are generally given the number one in the convoy and we're quite often followed by the large container ships which are on a critical timeline," he says.

Container ship captain Gupta explains that cruise ships usually get priority because of their numbers of passengers and because they are working within tight timeframes. This is the case not just in the Suez, but in other waterways, he says.

Usually two or three Suez pilots will board a cruise ship to help with transit, and Bathgate notes sometimes pilots may switch halfway through.

And so just how easily can a cruise ship slow down or speed up? The numbers are pretty similar to a container vessel.

"From full speed, just putting the engines to stop and letting the ship coast as it were, it would take 15 minutes, and 1.75 miles, for us to stop," says Bathgate.

"However, if we wanted to do a crash stop by putting the engines full astern, then it would take us just under five minutes, and the distance we would travel is only three quarters of a mile. So for the size of vessel, that's quite impressive figures."

Passenger perspective

While cruise captains are hard at work ensuring smooth passage through the Suez, passengers enjoy watching the convoy from their boardroom balconies.

Pam Broadhead transited the Suez Canal in November 2019, on Marella Discovery, an 11-deck TUI cruise ship. The vessel, traveling from Malaga in Spain to Dubai, entered from the north entryway and traveled south.

"Our ship was the first ship to sail through so it was an early alarm to be on deck to see the sunrise," she tells CNN Travel, recalling passengers drinking coffee and eating croissants as they watched the sun appear on the horizon.

"After seeing the sunrise we sat on our balcony with coffees watching as the boats (all of them container ships) passed by us in a constant convoy. Most fully laden with containers."

Occasionally, the passengers spotted local fishing boats, dwarfed by the Marella Discovery and most other ships in the convoy.

"Think they quite enjoyed waving to all of us and us them," Broadhead says.

Broadhead and her husband had hoped for a good view of the Mubarak Peace Bridge -- a road bridge that crosses the canal, and links Asia and Africa -- but early morning fog impacted the range of vision from the ship, which meant this wasn't possible.

"But just going underneath it felt quite moving. I think being of a generation that is aware of the Suez crisis possibly made it more of a moment," she says.

Misty conditions impacted a significant section of the passage, Broadhead recalls.

"At one point, visibility was barely a few meters into a bank of white cloud, making it impossible to see the canal edges or even the water or other ships but we continued silently cruising through with all the other ships following," she says.

"Thankfully, the fog dissipated around the halfway point and there was plenty to see from there on."

When the ship reached the southern exit, it was held for a while before leaving the canal. Broadhead and her fellow passengers were able to watch the canal voyage come to a close as the sun set over the Gulf of Suez.

What it's really like steering the world's biggest ships (msn.com)

 

Plain sailing for meme-makers: Jokes flood in as ‘Ever Given’ re-float in Suez Canal FAILS and more tugboats called in

26 Mar, 2021 20:11 / Updated 14 hours ago

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Taiwan-owned MV Ever Given (Evergreen), lodged sideways in Suez Canal, March 25, 2021 ©  AFP / SUEZ CANAL

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Memes based on the awkward situation in which the ‘Ever Given’ cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal finds itself continue to flood the internet, as efforts to re-float the vessel fail and more tugboats are called in to help.

The Panama-flagged container ship became lodged sideways in the canal – one of the world's busiest shipping lanes – on Tuesday, after it veered off course in high winds.

However, efforts to re-float the vessel on Friday were “not successful,” and two tugs will now arrive to assist on Sunday, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the ship, said in a statement.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘It might take weeks’ to free ‘enormous beached whale’ ship stuck in Suez Canal – dredging firm

Data from the shipping journal Lloyd’s List has suggested ‘Ever Given’s blockage is stopping up to $9.6-billion worth of trade from moving through the canal each day, but that hasn’t stopped the meme-makers getting to work.

Some of the jokes suggested that fictional union worker Frank Sobotka from HBO drama ‘The Wire’ should be called in to help, or that ‘Ever Given’ should be literally floated out with the help of balloons like in the Pixar animation ‘Up’.

Other responses had political undertones. Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro likened the snail’s pace of the stranded behemoth to that of US President Joe Biden’s solo press conference on Thursday – his first since entering the White House.

Given the Suez Canal’s Middle East location, other Twitter users suggested the Biden administration might be preparing drone strikes to free the trapped ship.

Podcaster Gary Brecher, known for the ‘War Nerd’, said it was “amazing” that Egypt’s Sinai insurgents had never conceived of blocking the canal to aid their attacks against the country’s security forces.

“10 billion dollars a day ... That pilot will have the ultimate student debt anecdote,” he added.

More mainstream offerings riffed on the alleged proliferation of fake news on Facebook, the Covid-19 pandemic, and even diversity training workshops.

However the joke could soon be on the memers, because a potential global toilet-paper shortage looms amid the shipping chaos, according to Brazilian wood-pulp company Suzano SA. The company’s CEO, Walter Schalka, told Bloomberg News that it was having difficulty shipping the raw material it needs to make toilet tissue due to the blockage in the canal.

ALSO ON RT.COMRussia promotes Arctic sea route as viable alternative to blocked Suez Canal

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Plain sailing for meme-makers: Jokes flood in as ‘Ever Given’ re-float in Suez Canal FAILS and more tugboats called in — RT World News