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HMM Rotterdam appears to be diverting to avoid congestion at Suez
- roelschroeven 6y agoIndeed, and so is Ever Greet (sister ship of Ever Given): https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/2021/33141/mega-container-ships-start-changing-routes-skip-su/ https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/2021/33141/mega-conta... There will most likely be lots more that choose to take the long route.
- unwind 6y agoIf (like me) you're not very familiar with the huge container ships of the world, here [1] is some data. Basically it's a ship on the same scale as the Ever Given, at 400x61 meters and a gross tonnage of 235,500. "Big" would be a suitable word. [1]: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:6213957/mmsi:351246000/imo:9868338/vessel:HMM_ROTTERDAM https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:62...
- regularfry 6y agoIn case, like me, you are confused by units, "23000 TEU" refers to the number of 20 foot containers they can carry. The average value of a container is thought to be somewhere north of $50,000. Even allowing for a fair margin of "it's a bit more complicated than that", you're in the region of $100,000,000 cargo-value per ship.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoAnd in practice they carry 40-foot containers. So 23,000 TEU is probably 11,500 containers. In practice you can stack 40-footers as you wish, or stack 20-footers as you wish. But you can't mix them easily. See, two 20-footers are 'broken' in the middle, and will stress a 40-footer in the (unreinforced) center to the point of failure if stacked high enough. Which of course they do.
- _0ffh 6y agoWell, if you can stack 40-footers on top of 20-footers I suppose that would be an option? That would of course make loading more complicated, but it's hardly an insurmountable obstacle, no?
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoOnce, on the bottom layer, you can have 20-footer(s). Once you go to 40-footers you can never go back in the stack. They're stacked 10-high above the deck. So you can have <10% 20-footers. Or put them all on the bottom, and only switch to 40-ft once.
- _0ffh 6y agoQuite, that's what I mean. Stack all the 20s first, then top it up with 40s.
- Gwypaas 6y agoYes, 2-3 weeks longer around Africa. The price to pass through the Suez Canal is made to be slightly lower than the cost of going around to extract as much value from the canal as possible.
- Jyaif 6y agoExactly. If a second canal was made through Israel, the price to pass through would fall to just above the maintenance cost.
- adav 6y agoUAE and Israel are working together on an oil pipeline to bypass those high costs of the Suez Canal. I recall it could reduce northbound oil tankers on the canal by something like 15%.
- iso1210 6y agoHell of a long way from Eilat to the med, and even further avoiding Gaza - about 240km. I wonder what the political implications would be
- heliodor 6y agoA duopoly is not much better than a monopoly. What makes you think it will go from maximum profit to approximately zero profit?
- regularfry 6y agoWhy? There'd still be more than enough traffic to keep both full, there's no need to compete on price.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y agoLot of shipping, by the looks of it: https://twitter.com/AriaCallaghan/status/1375154205233721348 https://twitter.com/AriaCallaghan/status/1375154205233721348 The city of Cape Town was founded for much this reason - it's a good sheltered stopping point, half way around. Looks like it will benefit from this again, for a few weeks.
- raverbashing 6y agoAh yes the Cape of Good Hope (an euphemism for "Good luck crossing that")
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y agoIt's the "Cape of Good Hope" in summer. In winter it's the "Cape of Storms". In the original Portuguese: "Cabo da Boa Esperança", "Cabo das Tormentas". Thanks, Bartolomeu Dias. The worst weather is actually slightly south-east of Cape Town & the Cape of Good Hope; around Cape Agulhas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Agulhas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Agulhas ).
- gruez 6y agoThat's slightly misleading because most of those ships were going that direction before the suez got blocked. I'd like to see how many actually got diverted.
- midasuni 6y agoHow long would it take to dig a bypass?
- roelschroeven 6y agoDeep enough, wide enough, and straight enough for those massive ships? That's a very expensive multi-year project.
- capableweb 6y agoSome back-of-the-napkin math: Suez canal is about 200km and was built in ~10 years, that's about 20km per year (ignoring start/stop time and everything else). It was built around ~1860 so let's say we're at least 20% more effective at this time (probably more), leaves us with 24km per year, or 2 kilometer per month. Let's say we start digging around the ship (I did a very shitty sketch with Google Maps here: https://i.imgur.com/A6sdvBn.png https://i.imgur.com/A6sdvBn.png) and it seems we're ending up with about 6km, so doable in ~3 months. Add in the panic of countless of countries to unblock the canal itself and we could probably do it in a month if we really try. At least based on my estimates (I'm a nobody with no formal education and also zero experience in shipping/logistics/boats/canals/construction), it seems it wouldn't be a multi-year project, but I'm more than eager to hear why I'm wrong.
- probably_wrong 6y agoI feel like agreeing with you in the "under a year" estimate, but a month seems too short. IMHO, the real problem would be the slow start. Based on the Wikipedia page, it looks like the construction itself took 10 years but the preparations took an additional 4. Given that "over 30,000 people were working on the canal at any given period", you would first have to build enough infrastructure for all the workers who would be doing the digging, then transport them there (plus the machines), pay them, feed them, and then clean it up once the work is done. If that's the case, then waiting the 2-3 weeks it would take to dislodge the ship itself may make more economic sense.
- 6y ago
- capableweb 6y agoI wonder if all the modern-time pirates around the African coast are reading Twitter/news/social media, sees this as an opportunity and are preparing for more assaults than usual? Not sure why I ask here, will just receive bunch of guesses in the end, a bit the wrong audience here maybe. Edit: Am I being downvoted because I assume no pirates hang around on HN / people on HN don't know pirates in real life? Otherwise I find your downvoting outright weird.
- sand_castles 6y agowould be a good thing IMO. Central Banks will finally get their hyperinflation.
- Ecco 6y agoI’m sorrry but your “Edit” makes you look pretentious. There’s a simple alternative: people just found your comment boring or irrelevant...
- capableweb 6y agoThanks for sharing your opinion! Hopefully at least it contains something more than meta complaints :)
- toyg 6y agoNot very practical to make your assault while there are tons of other ships nearby who can block you or report you by sight before you've had a chance to take off. If anything, I think pirates will be pissed off that the situation will deprive them of chances to ambush prey undisturbed.
- the-dude 6y agoActual pirate here! Good idea, we'll get right on it.
- viklove 6y agoYou should honestly always expected to get downvoted on HN. The community is pretty small, and the spirit of the site attracts contrarians and pessimists who will disagree with most things they see. My point total on this site has been stuck at the same level for the past year (under 1000), while on Reddit I've nearly crossed 100k in 10 years. There's definitely something about the people here that contributes to this.
- odiroot 6y agoThat's a long diversion! But probably quite picturesque. Must be annoying for the crew, I can imagine.
- gillesjacobs 6y agoIn Belgium we were told yesterday on the news that we should expect all freight to be belated at least three weeks due to the knock-on effects of the Suez blockage. The secondary effects of the blockage at our harbours are massive due to all the rescheduling chaos.
- wiz21c 6y agowell, if the problem is just rescheduling then it's not much. I mean, nobody's going to die. now if instead of using boats, they use planes, then it's very bad (I live close to an airport)
- ReadFList 6y agoI am hoping that shipping costs skyrocket. Let's see how long they can cling to "third world people working in sweatshops earning miserable wages" still make it cheaper to produce everything in Asia instead of locally.
- ed_blackburn 6y agoControversial and presented rather flippantly but there is a valid point behind this remark in my view.
- ReadFList 6y agoAs you can see by the downvotes people don't actually care much about neither the people of colour that are used as cheap workforce and neither their own countrymen that lost their jobs or can't get a job because they were all transfered to other side of the world, based on a lie that it would economically advantageous to do so, aslong as they can afford their toys. If it was something that involved POC in Europe or the USA, they would rush to their defence to earn their virtue points.