31 ms·

I don't think people are giving enough credit to how stuck the ship is. Look at some of the photos of the front of it. Look at how far out of the water it is

• grenoire 6y ago
  Weeks are measured in what I'd call, a lot of money. Is it a consolidation of funds sort of issue? Anybody responsible for getting it fixed?
  • WJW 6y ago
    They hired a company specialized in this kind of stuff (Boskalis), but as their CEO mentioned of TV it depends on how stuck it is. If you're lucky, pumping out the fuel and ballast can make the ship light enough to drag it clear with tugboats. If that doesn't work, you might have to unload some, most or all of the 20k containers from the ship to make it light enough. It can be done, but depending on how much is required it'll take a few days to a week to get the required equipment all the way to Egypt.
    • maxerickson 6y ago
      If I estimated right, the fuel is a few percent of the total mass (maybe around 5%). Not the most encouraging result.
      • userbinator 6y ago
        If it was floating, raising it out of the water by 5% would not be insignificant, and help relieve some of the forces holding it in place.
        • FranOntanaya 6y ago
          I wonder what's the margin for raising the center of gravity too much out of the water without risking it tipping, with all that cargo on top.
  • dan-robertson 6y ago
    The people who should be desperately trying to pay a lot of money to get the ship unstuck are maritime insurance underwriters. There is a lot of insurance against late delivery. Unless they have managed to figure out how this is an act of god, that is.
    • OldHand2018 6y ago
      That’s what they’re claiming - it was unexpectedly heavy winds in a sandstorm that caused it to ground. Also, they had two canal pilots on board. I’m pretty sure that this absolves the shipping company of responsibility for guiding the ship safely.
      • fuzxi 6y ago
        Seems it's not always so cut-and-dry. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26564849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26564849
  • eternalban 6y ago
    Egypt is bleeding money right now. It earned roughly USD 15,360,000.00/day from Suez passage fees in 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Authority#Revenues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Authority#Revenues
    • Aperocky 6y ago
      Wow, costs $300K to transit through the canal per ship by fee alone? That is capital intensive. It's amazing that more ships are not simply sailing around Africa.
      • maxerickson 6y ago
        Their daily operating costs are a significant fraction of the $300,000 and it saves a couple weeks. (tens of thousands of dollars just for fuel each day)
        • onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
          I'd imagine it is riskier sailing all the way around Africa than through the Suez, right?
          • tim333 6y ago
            It's risky for small boats due to the huge waves down there. Huge cargo ships seem to manage ok.
      • secfirstmd 6y ago
        Not really. Think of costs of fuel, costs of crew, I created insurance, slower delivery times.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • decker 6y ago
        Given that so many ships that are run by people who can afford $300k per trip, which could pay the annual salary for a team of analysts, it's amazing you're making this comment.
• 6nf 6y ago
  Only about the center third of the channel is actually deep enough for this massive ship. Both ends of the ship is stuck in several meters of sand. So far they've only managed get two bulldozers on to try and dig it out but progress is slow.
  • blhack 6y ago
    Those excavators are there for show while they try to figure out what to do. There is absolutely no chance that 2 guys with excavators are going to dredge out enough of the canal to free the ship, and the canal authorities know this. It there was even shadow of a chance that that might work, then every single excavator in Northern Africa would be on it's way to the canal to dig it out and free the ship. In fact I'd say that if there was even a snowball's chance in hell that that would work, China would be airdropping excavators into the area as we speak.
    • OldHand2018 6y ago
      > In fact I'd say that if there was even a snowball's chance in hell that that would work Damn straight, considering the law of salvage[1]: > The law of salvage is a principle of maritime law whereby any person who helps recover another person's ship or cargo in peril at sea is entitled to a reward commensurate with the value of the property salved. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage
      • hyperbovine 6y ago
        I'm no expert but the ship does not appear to be at sea. One could even venture so far to say that that is the crux of the matter.
        • adamjb 6y ago
          Not an expert either but I found this: >Thus, if the ship was not a under command, unable to navigate or to reach port unaided, the service will be considered salvage even though the ship was not in imminent danger of destruction. >It was in the light of this that Gilmore posits that releasing a ship that has run aground or on reefs, breaching a ship to keep her from running on rock, raising a sunken vessel, putting out a fire, and recapture of a ship taken by pirates, are all salvage acts. The maritime salvor as a volunteer adventurer, Nzeribe Ejimnkeonye Abangwu, International Journal of Law, Volume 3; Issue 5; September 2017
• leesec 6y ago
  Dumb question but what about heavy lift helicopters moving containers off 1 by 1?
  • BrianOnHN 6y ago
    It's a lot of containers.
    • leesec 6y ago
      You don't need to remove all of them? Just get it light enough to float it?
      • BrianOnHN 6y ago
        Helicopters also have limited capacity. So it's not like you could pick up the heaviest first. Which brings back the issue of sheer quantity.
      • PeterisP 6y ago
        Removing 10% of containers by helicopter also would take unreasonable time, removing 1% of containers might be plausible but I don't think it would make enough of a difference to justify the risks.
    • londons_explore 6y ago
      it's a quarter mile long. You can probably have 10 helicopters working at once while still keeping safe distances. Each helicopter has a crew of 4 on the boat and 4 on the shore. They hook 4 chains to the 4 corner hoists of each container. Say it takes 1 minutes per container to affix the chains, 1 minute to fly to the sand, 1 minute to unhitch, and 1 minute to fly back. Thats a lot slower than agricultural helicopters, but nobody will be very practiced with this yet, so it'll be slower. The entire ship could be unloaded with this method in 5.5 days. Perhaps less if not all the cargo needs unloading. The job could be half done by now...
      • yongjik 6y ago
• JshWright 6y ago
  Unloading it may be exactly what happens (based on comments from the Dutch salvage company brought in to deal with the mess). And yeah, it's going to take weeks (best case scenario).
• zeteo 6y ago
  >Some people have suggested unloading the ship. I don't think you realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship. You're basically asking to build a port in the middle of the egyptian desert. That isn't going to happen. I think you just need a smaller crane ship to transfer the cargo e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_crane_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_crane_ship
  • PeterisP 6y ago
    IMHO would take weeks to unload the cargo with something like that.
    • zeteo 6y ago
      Yeah but you may not need to unload it completely. At some point as the buoyancy improves the tugs become more likely to pull it off.
  • dogma1138 6y ago
    Assuming the crane ship can even get into position to offload it. The ship is stuck because the sides of the canal are quite shallow. You are quite likely to get two stuck ships instead of one.
• postingawayonhn 6y ago
  Unloading is feasible, it would just take a couple of weeks. They just need a floating crane on each side and some barges to take the containers away.
  • bigfudge 6y ago
    Is there a reason they couldn't have a smaller crane on board and dump them over the side. Surely even losing the cargo would be cheaper than keeping it blocked at this point?
    • Denvercoder9 6y ago
      If you dump the containers over the side, you managed to remove a ship blocking the canal, but now it's blocked by containers.
      • bigfudge 6y ago
        Right, but you don't need to leave them there. If it's limited depth you could pull them away with barges.
        • dahfizz 6y ago
          How long do you think it takes to fish a 20 ton container up from the bottom of a canal and load it onto a barge? There are ~10,000 containers.
          • Scoundreller 6y ago
            Barge? Pull it over the edge and worry about it later. Depending on contents, some might float very well. Or even dissolve away. My dollar store salt-shakers (with salt) came from vietnam. The top will be the lightest containers, so I’m guessing that’s where your 40 footer of ping pong balls is sitting.
            • 6y ago
• tomc1985 6y ago
  The pictures I've seen completely hide the ship's bulbous bow. It juts out seemingly like 50 feet from the front of the bow that you can see. It looks like all of that is wedged in the sand
  • RantyDave 6y ago
    Bingo. It's long, fat, and like the pharaohs ... buried in Egypt.
    • nullserver 6y ago
      Snip snip. Just cut the tip off.
      • IgorPartola 6y ago
        And have it sink there permanently?
        • nullserver 6y ago
          It’s half a joke. Think men in tights. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k4v8BVKlAfM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k4v8BVKlAfM But also curious of the bulb can be removed without affecting the integrity.
          • meowster 6y ago
            Yes, the bulb can be removed and the ship still seaworthy.
        • meowster 6y ago
          Ships have watertight bulkheads behind the bow in case they run into something. The ship can definitely sail without the bow. They should just cut it off and leave it there as a reminder to others not to f* up.
      • yebyen 6y ago
• NicoJuicy 6y ago
  How about creating a mini-dam surrounding the vessel and raising the water level so it can turn. Or stopping the current at 90% of the ship and letting it push to the front ( if it's in the right direction), perhaps in combination with gigantic sails ( if there's enough wind) and/or sucking sand/mud from the bottom.
  • nine_k 6y ago
    Apparently, there are no watertight gates anywhere near. Filling in the entire canal is unrealistic.
    • NicoJuicy 6y ago
      I'm not saying the entire canal. Surround the boat, make a dam somehow. Concrete is dry in 24-48 hours. Sand and wooden poles could be enough. Some ideas on the how, could be found in this video, on how they created a bridge in the middle ages: https://youtu.be/nJgD6gyi0Wk https://youtu.be/nJgD6gyi0Wk I'm pretty sure engineers could find better/faster solutions than what I'm proposing.
      • cricalix 6y ago
        The canal is 200 metres wide, 25ish metres deep. Gotta think in the cube, because now you're talking volume. I have zero idea what thickness you're going to need for your dam, but I'm going to spitball and say 10 metres at the top, and 30 metres at the bottom to get a slope like you'd see on something like the Hoover Dam. This means you need to provide .. lets see, a trapezoidal cross section is 500 square metres.. 100,000 cubic metres of filler. Twice. And then you probably need to curve it to resist the pressure, so that's a bit of a lowball figure. You can't dam any less, because the ship is stuck sideways across the canal. Using some old numbers for concrete pours in Ireland (2016 era) per cubic metre, that's 7.5 million Euro worth of concrete. Sure, you're not going to use pure concrete like that though - you'd probably start dropping massive boulders in first, and then try to cap/fill it. Have a read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands to get a feel for how long it takes to lay in that much material.. And then you have to dig it all back up to reopen the canal.
• adflux 6y ago
  Love the armchair engineers who think they're gonna solve this better than billion dollar companies
  • wongarsu 6y ago
    So you are complaining that on a startup forum people are trying to solve billion dollar questions? Besides, billion dollar companies often miss things. Yes, they have the more relevant experts and much better data than we, but they have to content with internal and external politics and have fewer people throwing around ideas. Sometimes the answer is to "why haven't you done X" is simply "nobody with a voice to be heard had that idea". If billion dollar companies were the infallible giants you make them out to be then startups straight up couldn't work.
  • lamontcg 6y ago
    Just let the air out of the tires, simple.
    • yitchelle 6y ago
      Put balloons around it to give extra buoyancy. That should work.
      • fendy3002 6y ago
        Or with crabs, potc style! /s
      • dghlsakjg 6y ago
        That actually is something that you can do in smaller salvage operations. The technical word for these balloons is lift bag.
        • raisedbyninjas 6y ago
          I searched for the biggest ones I could find this week and it was something like several tons. So we only need about 10 thousand of them.
• bostonfincs 6y ago
  Military does it all the time with helicopters. Not cheap or easy but probably the most likely outcome
• nomy99 6y ago
  People think I'm joking but we should bomb it to smithereens. The crater would probably just fill up with the water flow.
  • BrianOnHN 6y ago
    What would be the total loss cost of this ship?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • cdelsolar 6y ago
      less than the cost of the canal being blocked for multiple weeks
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    If this had gotten stuck in 1960s Russia they would have done that already.
    • nullserver 6y ago
      And 70 years later the radiation levels would be getting back to normal.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • nomy99 6y ago
        Can use this to avoid radiation :] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs
        • 6y ago
• 01100011 6y ago
  Could you build a temporary barrier around the ship and the section of the canal, bring in some massive pumps, and temporarily raise the water level around the ship? Edit: Something like this https://www.hydrologicalsolutions.com/aqua-barrier-cofferdam/ https://www.hydrologicalsolutions.com/aqua-barrier-cofferdam...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • rblatz 6y ago
    I'm not at all qualified on these matters, but that's one of the better ideas I've read.
  • brown9-2 6y ago
    the land around the canal looks pretty flat, those would have to be very strong barriers
  • fileeditview 6y ago
    I've had the exact same idea but the canal bank is very shallow.. so you would have to build around the whole ship (as you said). This also seems like a major undertaking. I am excited to see how they will solve the problem though!
    • wongarsu 6y ago
      If the bank is very shallow and mostly sand, maybe instead of building a damn all around the ship it would be easier to just dredge a new passage that goes around the stuck ship. After all the real problem isn't that the ship is run aground, it's that the canal is blocked for everyone else.
      • TylerE 6y ago
        If would be a very long diversion. The turning radius of large ships is, well, astronomical, we're talking miles. The canal itself is MASSIVE - 79ft deep and 700ft wide - and if you're turning you'd need to be wider still. We're talking about removing absolutely massive amounts of material.
• thewarrior 6y ago
  Crazy idea : Can we roll it into the water by pulling it over high strength rollers of some sort ? It would be pretty cool to use the same technique that was use to build the pyramids.
  • blhack 6y ago
    Okay hear me out: Somebody call Elon. Get the TBMs, and set them to work building a tunnel under the ship. Now fill the tunnel with giant rubber bladders. Call the Saudis and have them start shipping over helium. Fill the bladders with helium. Okay, keep the saudis around and get them to bring over one of the high pressure water drilling rigs that they use for oil. Start digging out the sand above the bladders, and float them up to be UNDER the ship. Okay now call the Dutch. Get them to bring over some MASSIVE water pumps and some damming equipment. The two guys on excavators can help. Dam up the canal on both sides of the ship, and pump out all the water. The bladders become rollers. Roll that ship back into the middle of the canal. Okay now repump the canal, and float the ship away. Bam. Done!
    • testaoijoiaj 6y ago
      > Get them to bring over some MASSIVE water pumps and some damming equipment. If you had this, then I would damn each side and pump water INTO that space. Raise water level, ship frees. Boom
    • a9h74j 6y ago
      Chicago1992 is standing by ready to donate air mattresses.
  • cricalix 6y ago
    Sane answer: No. The ship is 400 metres / 0.25 of a mile long. With containers, it weighs anywhere up to 199 thousand tons. One does not simply attach a few hundred cables, put some rollers under it, and pull with all the tractors you can find in Egypt. Also, it's already in the water. It's just turned sideways and buried the bulb (by the looks) into the canal wall.
• mc32 6y ago
  Not saying it can work in this scenario, but I think salvagers have used pneumatic devices to float and or manoeuver derelict ships.
• samizdis 6y ago
  > Some people have suggested unloading the ship. I don't think you realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship. It seems, though, that a partial unloading is being considered by a professional in the field according to quotes in an article in The Guardian [1]: However, Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, a specialist dredging company that has sent a crew to the scene, said data so far suggested “it is not really possible to pull it loose” and that the ship may need to be unloaded. “We can’t exclude it might take weeks, depending on the situation,” Berdowski told Dutch television. He said the ship’s bow and stern had been lifted up against either side of the canal. “It’s like an enormous beached whale. It’s an enormous weight on the sand. We might have to work with a combination of reducing the weight by removing containers, oil and water from the ship, tugboats and dredging of sand.” [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/suez-canal-blocked-ship-ever-given-stuck https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/suez-canal-blo...
  • hunter2_ 6y ago
    Perhaps the classic beached whale clearing technique [0] would work. [0] https://youtu.be/V6CLumsir34 https://youtu.be/V6CLumsir34
    • rosstex 6y ago
      I don't have to click that to know what it is.
      • redsparrow 6y ago
        If you haven't seen it, this is a remastered version and much better than the ones I remember watching ~20 years ago.
        • chris_wot 6y ago
          I got my Wikipedia chops by writing the article about that video. Got the Oddball Barnstar.
    • jugg1es 6y ago
• nabla9 6y ago
  Lloyd's List estimated that every day Suez is closed costs US$9 billion ($400 million per hour). If it could be done technically and open up the canal, it would be cheaper for insurance companies to buy the ship, it's cargo, buy all nearby property and then blow the whole ship up.
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    From orbit.
  • sellyme 6y ago
    I was wondering how far I'd have to scroll down this thread to get to the "does Egypt have any nukes?" solution.
    • a9h74j 6y ago
      I haven't spotted "now you have two problems" anywhere yet.
    • tim333 6y ago
      Nah but a US ICBM could be there in 30 min.
  • suzzer99 6y ago
    It makes you wonder if anyone has an old aircraft carrier they'd be willing to use as a battering ram. Try to hit it towards the bow to dislodge it.
    • playerm1 6y ago
      Newport News Shipbuilding had the old Enterprise CVN 65. May be slightly contaminated.
    • fogihujy 6y ago
      And if that ram breaks you'll not just have a giant container ship stuck there, but a bloody aircraft carrier as well. :D
• JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  If you unload 20,000 TEU's onto rail cars it takes 5000 cars, double-stacked. That's 50 100-car trains. It'll take weeks to months to load and unload all that, if a proper rail depot is available to take it. It takes huge cranes to reach across a megaship and into its hold. That'd have to be build. On sand. The idea that there's any quick way to manage the cargo of this ship is whistling in the dark.
  • wongarsu 6y ago
    Cranes on barges or ships, unloading the cargo into other ships is probably the most viable way to unload any significant amount of cargo.
  • rjsw 6y ago
    Why do they need to be put on rail cars ? Unload them onto the sand next to the canal.
    • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
      After you hit the limit of the crane reach, where does the next one go? Stacking on unstable sand seems a bad choice. So maybe 10% can be unloaded and just set on the ground. After that, they have to be moved somewhere.
  • carbonx 6y ago
    I think the idea is that they would only partially unload. Get enough weight off the bow to help move it out.
  • passer_byer 6y ago
    I agree with your reasoning here. I'm genuinely interested in your interpretation of the idiom, "whistling in the dark". I have heard this as, "whistling in the wind", taken to imply sound waves are distorted by wind patterns since sound waves use air molecules for conveyance. Whistling into the wind would tend to dampen sound waves intended for up-wind listners. Whereas, whistling with the wind tends to cause a whistle with the same decibel level as the into-the-wind variety to travel a bit further to down-wind listners. How would the medium of light impact travel distance of sound waves? Or is there a cultural reference here that is different for me as a American english speaker?
• Zenst 6y ago
  > It's really stuck. It's probably going to take a couple of weeks to get it unstuck. My armchair engineering would dump a load of salt into the water to increase buoyancy of the ship long enough for the tugs to get some momentum with less effort than currently. That would be my cheap try solution to help the tugs that have already hit there limit so why not change the physics and add a load of salt.
  • totalZero 6y ago
    You could increase the buoyancy by something like 230 kilograms per cubic meter if you fully saturate it on a hot day, but I suppose you'd have to dam up both sides to keep the brine from washing away.
    • Zenst 6y ago
      At this scale, even air pressure would be a factor, I'd presume a higher air pressure would be more conducive as large surface area of the water than the ship, though might be wrong.
    • MrOwen 6y ago
      Would that level of salinity be harmful once it reaches the sea?
      • totalZero 6y ago
        Assuming you narrowly dam up the canal near the ship to contain the brine, no I don't think so. Seawater is 3% saline and saturated brine is 26% saline, so you'd probably have sufficient mixing within the canal itself once you open the dams. The canal is 120 miles long and I can't imagine you'd dam up more than a third of a mile at maximum. But it would take a whole hell of a lot of salt.
      • nashalo_nighly 6y ago
        Yes since the salinity transfer from the canal into the Mediterranean Sea is already enough to make species from the Red Sea colonize the east Mediterranean. The Aswan dam reduced further the amount of freshwater coming to the area. So I would guess adding more salt wouldn’t be too good for the eastern Mediterranean.
• xwdv 6y ago
  This ship is delaying $400 million dollars per hour in global trades. It better not fucking take weeks.
  • baggy_trough 6y ago
    Or what?
    • thaumasiotes 6y ago
      Well, there's always the option of just demolishing the ship and its cargo, getting everything out of the canal without worrying about whether any of it survives the process. That would still be expensive, but is it more expensive than blocking the canal?
      • suresk 6y ago
        How do you destroy a 1300 ft ship with 20k+ TEUs of cargo on it? How do you then clean all of the debris out of a pretty narrow and shallow canal so that other ships can go through again? I can't imagine that being a very quick thing to do.
        • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
          >How do you destroy a 1300 ft ship with 20k+ TEUs of cargo on it? A smaller less stuck ship or barge you don't care very much about full of explosives. And you don't need to destroy the whole thing, just shred and distribute the part that's in the canal enough that it's no longer an impediment to navigation. Sure you might be left with 30 big chunks but 30 big chunks can be picked up with conventional marine construction equipment. If the bulbous bow is still buried in the sand then whatever, you don't care. We're talking about a Mont-Blanc sized explosion here. Definitively messy but with modern engineering I think you could whip up a directed blast that ensures the task is accomplished without unnecessarily digging a hole or some other dumb side effect.
        • YarickR2 6y ago
• jacquesm 6y ago
  Exactly. I'm guessing weeks rather than days, and maybe more than that. The best I can come up with is heavy lift helicopters to at least remove the front most containers to relieve some of the pressure but even that would be an enormous operation. Anything else would require major construction especially if it is to reach more than just the first four or five rows which is likely not going to be enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26 Can do up to 60 tons total weight for a bit. That should cover even the heaviest containers. At least, I hope it does, if not they're royally screwed.
  • tzs 6y ago
    The helicopter itself is 30 tons, leaving you 30. But 60 is the max takeoff weight. The max weight it is actually designed to operate at when carrying the maximum load is about 55 tons. With 30 for the helicopter itself, that leaves 25 tons for the load. A container can be up to 33 tons loaded, so the heaviest will be beyond that helicopter (at least of you don't want to push it past its safe limits). I assume that the heaviest containers are on the bottom of the stack, and that most containers aren't near the limit, so it could probably unload a substantial number of them.
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      I said 'total weight'. That includes the helicopter, obviously, you're not going to magically get a zero mass helicopter.
  • KittenInABox 6y ago
    You can't take only the containers at the ends, however, because the uneven weight would cause the center of the ship to collapse.
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      Not so sure about that collapse, the keel of the ship is currently supporting all of that weight and seems to be holding up just fine. It's essentially a suspension bridge at this point, but I agree that it is probably better to unload evenly, however, that will add another very substantial time penalty. If the ship would break (which I have no idea at what load imbalance that would happen) there would be a delay a lot longer so it may be worth it to play this extra safe. But there is a very large amount of pressure on the people there to get this resolved.
• akmarinov 6y ago
  Can’t we just dig a new canal?
  • Denvercoder9 6y ago
    Theoretically, yes. Practically, removing this ship is faster and cheaper.
• terramex 6y ago
  As this thread turned into 'post your crazy idea and get told why it would not work' here is my take: use powerful water pumps and direct streams of water to flush out the sand in spots where the ship rests on it and also around the bow. Something like that, but redirected under the ship: https://youtu.be/BIoBGZLc7wM?t=184 https://youtu.be/BIoBGZLc7wM?t=184
  • JulianMorrison 6y ago
    Or direct pressure up from below to liquefy the sand, quicksand-style.
  • dghlsakjg 6y ago
    This is the comment that proves the rule! This is such a good idea that it actually exists and works. Look up water injection dredging.
    • Animats 6y ago
      That's very likely to be used, probably in conjunction with the suction dredge already brought in. Using compressed air or water to push around the sand you want to dredge is quite common. Sometimes ships have been un-stuck from mud by injecting compressed air near the hull to break them free of suction. As a salvage job, this isn't that bad. No waves, a good climate, easy land and water access, hull intact, on an even keel, no leaks. It's just big. If you want to waste time on this, look up the AIS data for all the big dredges and cranes Boskalis and Smit own, and see what's moving towards the Med. Here's the Boskalis dredger fleet.[1] If those guys decide to move sand, sand will be moved. Smit's ships include the Smit Borneo, which is a crane ship big enough to take containers off a large container ship. It's done that before.[2] If they have to partially unload the ship in place, it can be done. Not all that fast, but it will get done. Here's a Smit container removal job from a smaller ship, but one in much worse condition.[3] Those guys do a lot of planning and modeling first. The idea is not to make things worse. [1] https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/dredgers.html https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/dredgers.h... [2] https://photos.marinetraffic.com/ais/showphoto.aspx?photoid=807592 https://photos.marinetraffic.com/ais/showphoto.aspx?photoid=... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ZSdVGLj-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ZSdVGLj-Y
• trhway 6y ago
  >You're basically asking to build a port in the middle of the egyptian desert. No. Helicopters. 10 helis, 1 container/sortie, 10 sorties/hour = 10000 containers in 5 days.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > 10 helis, 20tons each, 10 sorties/hour = 200k ton in 5 days. Among the many problems with this calculation is that shipping containers can't be freely subdivided and recombined, and can have a loaded weight over 30 tons. EDIT: And to address the crossing edit: > 10 helis, 1 container/sortie, 10 sorties/hour = 10000 containers in 5 days. ...and the heaviest-lift helicopters can't lift 30 tons.
    • trhway 6y ago
      One would expect lightest containers on top, heaviest at the bottom. CH53 can lift 15ton, so probably it can unload several top layers.
  • YarickR2 6y ago
    Just set up a ski lift-like structure on both sides of a canal, and run it with containers instead of skiers
  • PeterisP 6y ago
    You can't possibly have 10 helis safely unloading cargo at once from a single ship, that'd be an invitation for disaster. Also, doing that in the dark would simply not work. 10 sorties/hour is also unrealistic; with proper cranes and infrastructure at port it would take something like 10 minutes, with choppers it would take more time. IMHO if helis would even work (which is debatable and debated here), the optimistic estimate is that you could unload something like 20 containers per hour, 300 containers per day, so 30 days for the cargo. It seems plausible that you can dredge the banks and drag the ship out much quicker than that.
    • trhway 6y ago
      >You can't possibly have 10 helis safely unloading cargo at once from a single ship 5 loading at a time, while the other 5 unloading on the ground - plenty of space as ship is 1300 feet long. > doing that in the dark would simply not work you flood the ship and the space around with light. Almost 30 years ago we did a night ship unload at an unprepared location - no issues. >10 sorties/hour is also unrealistic doing it with crane we did about 15+ - we weren't union operation though - we were paid for performance, not time :) and being young we were moving fast. With chopper not much different if weather is ok.
• elorant 6y ago
  You could unload it using crane ships, and just leave the containers in heaps on the bank of the river, but it could take weeks because that thing is filled to the brink. Any way you look at it there's not an easy solution in sight.
• tyingq 6y ago
  "Some people have suggested unloading the ship. I don't think you realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship." I would guess someone could figure out how to use a normal-ish crane to unload some of the containers and set them down in the sand. The top containers look like they are maybe 150 feet or so higher than ground level.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    Even if so, now you've got a handful of containers on the sand and a giant ship stuck in the canal.
    • tyingq 6y ago
      Sure. Just guessing that taking weight off of the end that's marooned in the sand might help. Edit. Okay "ends".
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Just guessing that taking weight off of the end that's marooned in the sand might help. It is crosswise and in the banks on both sides.
• kevinsundar 6y ago
  I wonder, could you liquify the soil around the buried part of the ship by pumping air into the surrounding areas? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction
  • suzzer99 6y ago
    Now that is an interesting idea.
  • yellowapple 6y ago
    Just use some thumpers and Shai-Hulud will save the day.
    • Gibbon1 6y ago
      Classic old man and sandworm pulling the ship free.
• oAlbe 6y ago
  Is there a chance the ship could tip over in some type of manouver, considering it's stuck both at the front and the back?
  • sjg007 6y ago
    Probably
  • Aperocky 6y ago
    How it gets from bad to worse.. Realistic headline: As more of the bow and stern are freed from sand, ship suddenly lists and dumps 5000 containers into the canal.
  • macintux 6y ago
    Apparently, if you unload containers without sufficient care, there's even a chance the ship could break in half. That would obviously be catastrophic.
• mooreds 6y ago
  Don't worry, there's a guy digging it out :) https://twitter.com/SuezDiggerGuy https://twitter.com/SuezDiggerGuy
• samuell 6y ago
  There are helicopters that I think can be used for (un)loading containers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane
  • oAlbe 6y ago
    Seems to have a max take off weight of 19 tons by the look of it. The heli itself weights about 9 of those tons already, which leaves 10 tons of leeway. Those containers, from what I've read around here, can be well above 30 tons each. So that sounds like a no go. Also, they built only 31 of those helis in total according to wikipedia.
    • kmonsen 6y ago
      And 20k containers. I guess they don't have to offload all of them, but still it is hard to imagine numbers this large.
    • samuell 6y ago
      Aha, OK, I didn't realize the copter itself was included in the 19 tons. I also saw someone mentioning 40 feet containers weighing up to max 9000 lb (ca 4 tons), but not sure it is a relevant or applicable number.
• cm2187 6y ago
  But naively, I’d think you just need to apply the opposite force to the force that got it stuck. Surely that didn’t break the hull.
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    I think they've already tried that with tugboats, but it's really really stuck / wedged in.
• xg15 6y ago
  Dumb question: How about evacuating and then blowing up the ship? Yes, the loss of the ship and all its cargo will be immense, but that seems to be dwarfed by the damage the blocked canal causes.
  • dragontamer 6y ago
    Then how do you clean up 220,000 tons of debris? Turns out: the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out. And its already packed and loaded.
    • xg15 6y ago
      I mean, the 220,000 tons of debris are at least not a single solid object - so maybe they'd be moved by the current (if there is any) or could be pushed to the sides by smaller vessels. Then the actual cleanup can happen while the canal is already back in operation. > the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out. Well, evidently not if it is stuck.
      • Denvercoder9 6y ago
        You'd need a nuclear-level explosion to blow this ship up into small, practically movable pieces that aren't connected anymore. Everything on that ship is steel. Conventional explosions would just blow a few holes in it, and deform everything enough that moving things becomes impossible.
        • nomy99 6y ago
          Bunch of these ?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs
          • nwallin 6y ago
            Won't work. Thermobaric weapons are very good at killing people, and breaking equipment, but aren't particularly good at evacuating material.
• failwhaleshark 6y ago
  They need to give that canal some serious laxatives to flush that ship out. ;-] But seriously, it looks like dredging or a king tide will be needed to get that ship flushed out of there. Btw, it takes roughly 9-10 additional days to navigate a ship around the horn so ships would be better off steaming the long way around if time is critical.
• thereisnospork 6y ago
  >Some people have suggested unloading the ship. I don't think you realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship. You're basically asking to build a port in the middle of the egyptian desert. That isn't going to happen. I say build a trebuchet on deck and start launching containers into the desert.
  • jebeng 6y ago
    This is the way. Just check the contents first so there's nothing really harmful inside. Also start scaling up to multiple trebuchets as soon as possible and make it rain. Stimulate the local economy via job creation for the clean up. Monetize the live stream too. The trebuchet will save the global supply chain thanks to you.
    • gst 6y ago
      > Monetize the live stream too. Don't forget to sell the containers as NFTs.
      • snewman 6y ago
        Now Flinging TEUs
  • bamboozled 6y ago
    Would it not be easier to use Chinooks to remove cargo ?
    • justbrowsing_ 6y ago
      Last time I heard that was the Maemo OS codename before Diablo
    • as-j 6y ago
      This thing could have 20,000 containers on it. Thankfully it’s a 3rd of a mile long, so maybe you could offload 2 at a time, one helicopter on either end. At 1 container every 5 minutes....working 24 hours per day....that’s 70 days of work.
• billfruit 6y ago
  I'm not familiar with shipping, but I would guess there are some type of crane ships which could be dispatched along with barges to slowly offload some of the container. Obviously it is going to take some time mustering all these specialized craft and specialists on location. What's with the many joucular/tounge-in-cheek posts on this thread..
• krick 6y ago
  Ok, since everyone is sharing their solutions, and nobody named the most obvious one, I'll do it: just nuke it from orbit.
  • tim333 6y ago
    I'm at a seaside resort in Egypt so I could get a bucket and spade and head up there to dig it out. Might take a while though.
• lhorie 6y ago
  This is a really good example of how terrible people are at judging scale. Some numbers getting thrown around downthread say there's something to the tune of 10,000 40ft containers. To give a bit of a sense of perspective, that's like trying to clear out some 200 football fields worth of semi-trucks, except they are stacked, packed full of stuff, and have no gas or wheels. And all of them are perched atop a ship that is twice as tall and there's no suitable cranes or similar equipment anywhere near the vicinity. If you ever seen a truck up close, you probably have an idea how tricky it is to maneuver even a single functional one on open flat ground. I can't even begin to imagine what it would take to move off even a fraction of 10,000 equivalents of bricks of the size of trucks, let alone budge the massive ship off of the sand banks.
  • tyingq 6y ago
    All true, though I imagine the plan is unloading only some of the containers in conjunction with dredging, pumping out fuel, etc. Still huge scale, but I imagine getting just one of the ends out of the sand would open up more options.
  • deleted 6y ago
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    • stjohnswarts 6y ago
      It probably was when it was initially built :) .
  • rtkwe 6y ago
    For moving containers off the best bet would probably be heavy lift choppers, the ship is large enough you could have several working on it at once and then just drop them off nearby to be loaded onto barges or something. A huge undertaking but it any weight taken off the Evergreen is less digging they have to do and the time is so expensive. Also it's less middle of nowhere there's a pretty large airbase nearby it looks like from Google Maps and a second smaller airport south of where Evergreen got stuck so there's plenty of support near. https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3371843,32.2798365,3799m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@30.3371843,32.2798365,3799m/dat...
• TedShiller 6y ago
  This ship thing is a perfect metaphor for the current US government.
• saalweachter 6y ago
  The most impressive thing to me, reading this comment thread, is all the ways the situation could get worse.
• antidamage 6y ago
  Helicopters are a thing. And yeah, even completely empty with no fuel or ballast you will never see the bow out of the water like that. However it is more than capable of surviving being dragged along sand. It's just that they have nothing strong enough to drag it with. Eventually someone will stake some anchors into the ground and use an industrial winch, but that's where hull design starts to suck - there's no good anchor points by which to pull it, so there'll need to be a large number of straps cradling the hull that are being pulled.
  • King-Aaron 6y ago
    How long do you think it would take to unload 20,000 40-foot containers via helicopter? I'll start with my guess: A long time
    • RapidFire 6y ago
      You would probably need to be the US military. Once you have a setup onsite; helicopters, pilots, fuel, maintenance, crew to rig containers, you could rapidly unload the containers. Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA US Military is probably the only entity that could pull this off in a timely manner. At great cost of course...
      • theshrike79 6y ago
        Except the US Military has exactly zero helicopters capable of lifting anything that heavy. Russian Military has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26 That's the one they've used to rescue downed US helicopters :)
        • RapidFire 6y ago
          Looks like your right. The US has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_CH-53E_Super_Stallion#Specifications_(CH-53E) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_CH-53E_Super_Stallion... as its near equivalent with a external payload of 36,000 lb. The Russian helicopter carries 8000lbs more at 44,000lb, though Wikipedia doesn't say if this is an external or internal payload. Looks like a 40ft shipping container weights around 8000lbs empty, couldn't find a stat on full. It seems such an operation would be outside the capacity of these helicopters. Sure they could comfortably lift empty containers, but probably not full ones.
• EGreg 6y ago
  Why not just CUT IT APART and clean up the mess after? Like this: https://jalopnik.com/a-chain-just-cut-through-a-capsized-cargo-ship-filled-w-1845784581 https://jalopnik.com/a-chain-just-cut-through-a-capsized-car...
  • Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Because that would take months; they'd have to unload it, pump out the oil and fuel, get a disassembly crew and a ton of gear and all the infrastructure around it, etc.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • EGreg 6y ago
      Then why not just BLOW IT UP?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• movedx 6y ago
  Couldn't we just place dynamite near the front and use the explosion to push the ship off the sand/rocks and back into the water? ... /s
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ivanhoe 6y ago
  >Some people saying: just drag it off of the sand. Okay! And what happens when that causes you to rip a hole into the hull of the ship? Now it's really stuck. Not just that, but don't forget the inertia. The moment the ship gets unstuck the force needed to get it moving, multiplied with the ship's huge mass would create such a huge momentum that it would be very hard to stop it from hitting the other shore with the stern.
  • tim333 6y ago
    The hull looks pretty tough but it's gonna be a job getting enough pull to drag the thing.
• Parzival99 6y ago
  Agreed. Though, to be fair, even the CEO of Flexport initially dismissed this, saying "I assume they'll have it fixed in a day or two. And anyways there's such a backlog of ships waiting to unload at the ports of arrival that it probably won't even impact the transit times of the cargo." https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1374501965418352640 https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1374501965418352640
• masklinn 6y ago
  > Look at some of the photos of the front of it. Look at how far out of the water it is sitting. The ship might look like that if it were totally empty, but not when it is full of containers like this. One thing many people are missing is the Suez Canal is not concrete, it’s sand, so the canal “walls” are not vertical they’re a relatively gentle 3:1 slope (4:1 in wider areas). Meaning only the center half of the canal is flat and “at depth”, the ship started hitting sand 30-40m from the edge of the canal. By the time it reached the visible edge it’s half-sitting on sand half wedged into it.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    There are locks on either end of the canal. I wonder if the water level can be raised a little to help?
    • akg_67 6y ago
      There is high tide in canal till next Thursday. It is the best window moving the ship. Once low tide, it will be much more difficult to unstuck the ship and move. https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Suez-Egypt/tides/latest https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Suez-Egypt/tides/lat...
• otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  > It's probably going to take a couple of weeks to get it unstuck. You're an optimist, that's for sure.
• aardvark179 6y ago
  Depending on the design and bulk heads ripping a hole in the hull can be an option. My father was a naval architect and did some work re-floating container ships and I know they did this on at least one occasion and got the ship up the west coast of Africa, past Spain and Portugal, and through the English Channel. They would have stopped earlier but the ship yards en route jacked up their prices because they assumed there was no other choice. The interesting thing for me is going to be where that ship goes if they manage to re-float it.
• tinus_hn 6y ago
  If it is any indication, other ships are turning around and betting on the two weeks journey around Africa.
  • ric2b 6y ago
    Imagine if one of those also gets stuck while turning around.
• one2three4 6y ago
  The economic fallout will be big and it gets worse day by day. And we weren't exactly in the best shape to begin with... Suez canal seems to be a Single Point of Failure.
• slimbods 6y ago
  Seems like the risk assessment wasn't good if hitting the bank results in this kind of outcome.
• jacobr1 6y ago
  It is really pretty amazing that this hasn't happened with more frequency in the past.
• Evil_Saint 6y ago
  In an emergency situation like this: could they not use helicopters to lift containers off of the ship and just stack them next to the canal until they've freed the ship? Seems pretty quick to setup and do assuming there are helicopters that can move that weight.
  • t90fan 6y ago
    Containers are 2 (20ft) or 4 (40ft) tonnes (roughly) unloaded. And they can (if I remember right) contain 20 tonnes or so, of cargo. Our current chinooks can handle 10 tonnes, and the old models could carry 4, if I recall. And probably less in desert heat. So helicopters will not be moving any containers
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Gustomaximus 6y ago
  > Look at some of the photos of the front of it. Look at how far out of the water it is sitting. I'm curious how much of this is hightide vs low. If the photo is taken at low tide you have about 1.7m drop on the stern which is going to make it look far more stuck. While if the photo is at high tide, wow. > And what happens when that causes you to rip a hole into the hull of the ship? I cant see sand friction ripping a hole in the steel unless there are rocks in the mix. I think the bigger risk is cracking the hull if there is too much weight at the front vs displacing this across the entire hull. > I don't think you realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship. To this, while absolutely it huge infrastructure Im assuming they only intends to reduce weight, not unload. So some crane choppers or whatever can make a big difference taking off 5% of containers type thing. I even wonder if they want to keep the back loaded to effectively life the front... but that might exacerbate the risk of hull breakage?
• Seaphyre 6y ago
  Oh look! Everyone in these comments was way off. They dredged some sand and dragged it off - after days, not weeks. I now wonder how regularly Gell-Mann Amnesia occurs for people on HN, really.
• TedShiller 6y ago
  Apparently it wasn’t that hard after all. HackerNews people are not shipping experts.