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WCGW: lets do a 180° turn in the Suez Canal


AUS-97HORN

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That dog is smarter than half the A&M Civil Engineers I know.  Pos rep, it was awesome watching him work and that little spin move at the end was a great touch.

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If you ever need to understand why a substantial U.S. Navy is necessary, look at all the commerce and inter-dependency out on those waters.  Not pirates, but another nation's Navy could go rogue for 48 hours, target a few dozen of those ships for sinking, and the halt our global economy would take would make Covid-19 look like a misunderstanding.  Nevermind, the essential supplies on some of those ships as well.

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27 minutes ago, Lobo said:

If you ever need to understand why a substantial U.S. Navy is necessary, look at all the commerce and inter-dependency out on those waters.  Not pirates, but another nation's Navy could go rogue for 48 hours, target a few dozen of those ships for sinking, and the halt our global economy would take would make Covid-19 look like a misunderstanding.  Nevermind, the essential supplies on some of those ships as well.

Using the canal saves time and money, but ships can sail around Africa. It takes a week longer, and more fuel. Losing the canal would not halt the global economy.

Bernard

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5 minutes ago, Bernard said:

Using the canal saves time and money, but ships can sail around Africa. It takes a week longer, and more fuel. Losing the canal would not halt the global economy.

Bernard

I said sinking ships out at sea.   Thank you for explaining that canals save time and money and that the alternative takes more of each.  Losing the canal would not halt the global economy.  What I said was a rogue Navy wiping out a strategic selection of a few dozen ships out on the open shipping lanes that are not protected by the U.S. Navy...that would cause some serious kerfuffles.  I made no mention of a canal issue causing this halt, but ships "Out on those waters."  "Out on the water" is generally accepted to mean, open water, not locks/canals/port channels.  

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40 minutes ago, Bernard said:

Using the canal saves time and money, but ships can sail around Africa. It takes a week longer, and more fuel. Losing the canal would not halt the global economy.

Bernard

Way more than a week longer.  More like three weeks at a non-economical speed.  Over a month at most efficient speeds.  

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4 hours ago, Lobo said:

 Not pirates, but another nation's Navy could go rogue for 48 hours, target a few dozen of those ships for sinking, and the halt our global economy would take would make Covid-19 look like a misunderstanding.  Nevermind, the essential supplies on some of those ships as well.

Pffft. No big deal, just order what you need from Amazon Prime instead.

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Why the fuck aren't there any marsh buggies around? I don't guess there are any coonasses near the Suez. 10% of the world's shipping at a stand-still you think they would have flown some shit in by now.

 

marsh1.jpg

 

 

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5 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

If the darker blue is shallow enough, I don't see how digging out the bow right at the edge of the land will help much. I would also be working on Plan B to find a method to start unloading the ship to make it lighter. 

Could it be bad enough that dismantling the boat might be needed? I know that sounds extreme, but I would be doing anything and everything possible to open up those lanes.  A quick google search shows that the canal covers 5-10% of the egyptian budget. Every day counts.

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On 3/25/2021 at 7:23 AM, El Diablo said:

I was at the helm of a 400' cargo ship in '85, we were leaving the port of Jacksonville FL. St. Johns river has a nasty current and we had a pilot onboard who was in charge of the deal. Current kept pushing us closer and closer to the bank on the "wrong" side of the river, we were driving on the wrong side of the road. Captain was getting more and more nervous, biting his tongue but pacing the bridge anxiously. Pilot would give order for more rudder and we kept on drifting over. Eventually we had enough rudder on to stop the drift but we're still in the wrong lane. That's when we first noticed the shrimp boat coming towards us. I'm guessing the crew was all on the back deck cleaning their catch and they didn't notice us until we were damn near on them. The little boat passed down our starboard side so close that I lost sight of them due to the size difference. We eventually made our way on out to sea without incident but it was unnerving. It would not have been my fault if we had run aground or run over the little shrimp boat but I still would have been the guy on the wheel and that would have sucked ass. 

 

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2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

If the darker blue is shallow enough, I don't see how digging out the bow right at the edge of the land will help much. I would also be working on Plan B to find a method to start unloading the ship to make it lighter. 

Could it be bad enough that dismantling the boat might be needed? I know that sounds extreme, but I would be doing anything and everything possible to open up those lanes.  A quick google search shows that the canal covers 5-10% of the egyptian budget. Every day counts.

That would be the longest and last ditch solution.  Not the same situation, but a salvage team is dismantling a capsized cargo ship off of Georgia right now. The logistics involved in taking apart something of that size is insane.

Fascinating to read abut how the crew in Georgia is going it,

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34847785/capsized-cargo-ship-salvage-watch/

 

 

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22 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

Lightering barges would be the first step I would think. 

Lightering and?  Lightering and?  Lightering and?.................smoking the refer! 

AHHHH!!!!

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Quote

*MORNING EVER GIVEN UPDATE: ALL OVER THE WORLD, PANTS ARE INFLATING WITH BROWN LOADS OF PANIC.*
 
THE SCOOP: The EVER GIVEN is still stuck. She’s gong to be stuck for days, perhaps weeks. Our girl is large and in charge, and she’s sitting there like a sack of hams. Dutch salvage company Smit (sister to Boskalis) and Japan’s Nippon Salvage company are working on a solution to get her unstuck. Efforts so far have involved two dredges, nine tug boats, and four Very Brave Diggers on the banks. Meanwhile, vessels carrying important goods can be rerouted south, around the Cape of Good Hope (a 3,500nm detour)? But that's not necessarily a great plan either.
 
PROBLEM THE FIRST: She’s not budging, no matter how hard the tugs push.
SOLUTION #1: Try to pull her mighty ass out of there?
 
PROBLEM THE SECOND: She’s too heavy to pull. In fact, she can’t be freed at her current weight.
SOLUTION #2: Well, shit. Drain fuel oil and ballast water?
 
PROBLEM THE THIRD: Unloading fuel and ballast water could make her capsize. ‘Cause, you know, she’s stacked sky high with some 20,000 containers. And the only real way to lighten her *safely* would be from the top. My girl is top-heavy… like your mom.
SOLUTION #3: Okay, so… offload the containers?
 
PROBLEM THE FOURTH: Egypt doesn’t have a floating crane that can reach that high.
SOLUTION #4: Seriously? I can’t even. Fine. Dig around her until she gets unstuck?
 
PROBLE THE FIFTH: That’s kind of the plan right now, and they’re working on it using Egyptian dredges. One issue is that their equipment keeps getting decapitated by the rocky soil. Also, salvagers will need to move about 530,000 to 706,000 cubic feet of sand to free her. No, really, they need to dig down 12 to 16 meters deep (that’s 39 to 52 feet for those still stuck using an antiquated, non-metric system. Get with the program, you weirdos).
SOLUTION #5: Seriously with this? Well, keep digging anyway. They can remove fuel and ballast water if necessary. Then, pray she dislodges at high tide with help from the tugs. Give everybody a raise. Send the waiting ships south, around Africa. It’ll delay them by about a week, which is probably better than waiting around.
 
PROBLEM THE SIXTH: What if it doesn’t work?
SOLUTION #6: You’re going to have to unload her containers and pray she doesn’t capsize. ‘Cause once our girl goes ass over tits like a drunken Packers fan at a tailgate party, she ain’t getting up easily again.
 
PROBLEM THE SEVENTH: But you said that Egypt doesn’t have floating crane that can reach the containers?
SOLUTION #7: You know what? Screw you.
 
PROBLEM THE EIGHTH: 30% of the world’s shipping containers go through the Suez Canal every day. Also, Egypt is losing around $400M every hour right now.
SOLUTION #8: *weeps* Now you’re just hurting my feelings.
 
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH:
Yesterday, a British dude named Mr. Ox, was worried about the £1.9M worth of refrigerated lamb he has coming in from New Zealand. All his stuff is loaded on three separate vessels, all of which are doing spinny-spins around their anchors and observing the Coriolis Effect in action. So is Mr. Ox as he watches his shipment of lamb going down the drain. (Even if his boats get sent around the long way, It’s unlikely that his lamb will make it to the UK in time. I haven’t checked on their status yet this morning.)
 
THE DRAMA CONTINUES.

 

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PROBLEM THE NINTH: There's an apparent shipping container shortage at the moment which could fuck up not only the delivery of consumer goods and other commodities, but also just-in-time delivery systems for manufacturers...because COVID.

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Ever since its deployment in the 1950s, the shipping container has itself revolutionized global trade. As a standard-size receptacle that can be quickly plunked onto rail lines and trucks, it has sharply reduced the time needed to move goods from one place to another.

Exponential increases in how many containers may be piled atop a single ship have effectively shrunk the globe further. Capacity has increased 1,500 percent over the last half-century, and has nearly doubled over the last decade alone, according to Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty, a shipping insurance company.

These advances in trade have yielded sophisticated and highly efficient forms of specialization, with auto factories in the north of England relying on parts from across Europe and Asia. The rise of the container ship has expanded the availability of consumer goods and lowered prices.

But these same advances have yielded vulnerabilities, and the disruption at the Suez Canal — the passageway for roughly one-tenth of the world’s trade — has intensified the strains on the shipping industry, which has been overwhelmed by the pandemic and its reordering of world trade.

As Americans have contended with lockdowns, they have ordered vast quantities of factory goods from Asia: exercise bikes to compensate for the closure of gyms; printers and computer monitors to turn bedrooms into offices; baking equipment and toys to entertain children cooped up at home.

The surge of orders has exhausted the supply of containers at ports in China. The cost of shipping a container from Asia to North America has more than doubled since November. And at ports from Los Angeles to Seattle, the unloading of those containers has been slowed as dockworkers and truck drivers have been struck by Covid-19 or forced to stay home to attend to children who are out of school.

Delays in unloading spell delays in loading the next shipment. Agricultural exporters in the American Midwest have struggled to secure containers to send soybeans and grains to food processors and animal feed suppliers in Southeast Asia.

This situation has held for four months, while showing few signs of easing. Retailers in North America have been frantically restocking depleted inventories, putting a strain on shipping companies in what is normally the slack season on trans-Pacific routes.

The blockage of the Suez Canal effectively sidelines more containers. The question is how long this lasts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/business/ship-suez-canal.html

 

 

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22 minutes ago, gyroprotagonist said:

i don't have the finer details worked out yet, but give me 20 cubic meters of tannerite and we can make something happen

maybe get the thing from Oceans 13(?) that dug the chunnel?

definitely use this guy as captain next time

72083911_3010243352336203_57446979702053

The Corinth Canal is narrow and I can't believe a boat this size attempted it.

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

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