Things have gone sideways in the Suez Canal when a gigantic container ship went, well, sideways. Ships are at a standstill on either end while tugs attempt to get the vessel pointed in the right direction.
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I have questions:
- How does one go sideways in there in the era of thrusters and presumably fairly predictable tides?
- How long does it take for tugs to push the thing straight again?
- Who thought it was a good idea to pass ships through the canal that can’t fit sideways?
(/s if not clear)
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i hate to tell you this sir, but regarding #3, there are ships made to just barely fit the most narrow part of the panama canal, forget sideways.
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Indeed, and I presume true of most canals. 
Needed more /s!
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I used to live next to a canal in Nottingham that I could see from my kitchen window. Every few weeks somebody would try to turn a 25 foot boat in a 20 foot canal.
Just one of those things.
(It was always funny.)
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It’s a real chonker:
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Mood:
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Apparently the ship lost all power including to the rudder and drifted to the bank and the bows raised.
It is feared that the middle of the ship might droop.
Next step is to remove some of the fuel. And maybe some containers if they can get cranes of sufficient size.
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[…]
Traffic on the canal that divides continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula, and through which around 10% of global maritime trade flows, came to a standstill Tuesday with dozens of vessels affected.
[…]
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That looks like a toy tractor. I struggle to see how this will work.
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And that’s one of Cat’s bigger construction loaders, not one of the mining specialty loaders. It’s not the right equipment for this job, they need an excavator.
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The bulbous bow is deeply embedded beneath the bank of the canal. I suppose someone thought digging it out would help. But if they seriously believe that, I’d expect to see an army of excavating equipment, not one front end loader.
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Damn, just the scale of that thing. Holy shit, what a mess!
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Thank dog!
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We have yet to wildly speculate on what happened! My best guess (having no experience in either piloting or avoiding huge ships, nor having read anything other than a couple tweets) is that… I guess the pilot thought they were dead on, and by the time they noticed, the prow was doomed to snag the side of the canal? At some point, no amount of maneuvering would stop the prow from jamming right in.
Then momentum took over, and no matter what you did with lateral thrusters or reverse screws that thing’s gonna chock-a-block right in there when the front stops and the rear keeps a-goin’.
I wonder if these things are fitted with computer-assist steering for canal travel. Something like that going haywire could have contributed, but you know what they say about open-loop automation.
To summarize:
I don’t think it’s possible to intentionally draw a dick with a Suezmax but it’s pretty funny anyway.
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