African or European?
Look at the bright side: at least there’s no significant current and no bridge involved:
Well, I recognize the very first bridge at the beginning of that video, the medieval stone bridge at Potter Heigham in Norfolk. Notorious for having hired boats stuck under it, despite all warnings.
Somebody upthread asked if there was enough food for the crew. On today’s menu: hot dogs.
Great one! 
Hey Cap’n Quint! We’re gonna need a wider bun.
And as in incidents like that on roads, there may have been a component of excessive or mistimed corrections at play.
Could they mount cranes on the ship itself to move heavy containers out to the bow and stern where other cranes could then remove them from the ship? Sort of like a relay race hand off.
Funny you should post that picture.
This looks too absurd to be true, but it’s being reported as staright news on HuffPo:
The track looks an awful lot like the picture you posted
I wouldn’t think so, they have to attach it to the containers, there’s no deck to speak of. Most likely course is floating cranes, barge mounted. Problem there is they’re going to be slow. Purpose built container cranes can move about 30 containers an hour, one every 2 minutes. A utility crane isn’t going to have the container specific hardware, so every box will need to be manually strung up, with men on top of the containers attaching cables one by one.
If you figure a very fast 6 minute turnaround to manually wire up, move, land and unhook a container, that’s 10 boxes an hour. To move 25% of this cargo means 4,500 containers moved, 450 hours with one crane, 225 hours with 2 cranes, and over 100 hours with 4 cranes, if you can even get 4 utility cranes safely working at the same time.
The latest info I have is that they are setting hopes on high tide Monday to help refloat the ship which has been somewhat lightened by the removal of ballast water. Monday’s tide is expected to be 18 inches, the highest tide of this moon cycle. (From the New York Times.)
Not a surprise. A friend and I would occasionally spend summer vacation cruising the Trent-Severn Waterway, essentially a 387 km (240 mile) canal, interspersed with lakes, connecting Lake Ontario with Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. Houseboats were the plague of the waterway in certain specific areas, in part because they all seemed to be driven by incompetents, all the more so because many of them were rentals – basically giant battered tin bathtubs driven by morons with very little experience in either boating or navigation. Our #1 priority was always to keep as much distance as possible from these idiots. Going through a lock with one of these beside you or behind you was always a terror.
Next time try Lake Powell in the US southwest:
Wife and I spent 10 days on a houseboat there a few years ago. We went in late March which was the shoulder season after the air had warmed up but before it got hot. In those 10 days afloat we saw 2 other boats for a total of about 30 minutes. We simply checked off the planet for the rest of the time. Us, the stars, and plenty of food and room on a houseboat built for 8 people.
It was great.
No offense intended against houseboats as a concept, which actually can be a great form of roomy recreational boating. And given your background, I’m sure that you were one of the most competent boat pilots out there. But I’m just reporting what I’ve personally experienced (including a few near-misses with incompetent houseboaters) which, put another way, is “the average IQ is 100, ergo, at least half the population consists of idiots unfit to pilot watercraft of any kind”.
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Time for everyone to go the long way around Africa.
@wolfpup: Agree about boatniks. We have plenty here in SoFL too. At least here and now you can usually recognize them by the giant Trump flags and give them a wide berth.
The value to Lake Powell is that for all practical purposes it’s deserted. Unlike your experience on the waterway. So on the lake you’re safe from boatniks. Not because they’re competent, but because there simply aren’t any within 10 miles of you.
The Trent-Severn sounds wonderful. Something I will make time to experience. Thank you! Boatniks and all.
My wife has been bingeing videos about narrowboats – English houseboats, built to fit in the canals and locks that run throughout England, and which are similar in size to the houseboat that’s stuck in the canal in the picture in post 320. Based on the videos I’ve seen her watching, there are a fair number of incompetent houseboat operators in England, too.
Interrupting this thread about houseboats… 
It’s being reported that the Ever Given is unstuck.
So, waiting for high tide and digging appears to have been the right course. Using the Power of the Moon for Good!
This link says
“The MV Ever Given was successfully re-floated at 04:30 lt 29/03/2021. She is being secured at the moment. More information about next steps will follow once they are known.”
So what does “being secured” mean? They’ll secure the ship at the side of the canal and check it out and let other ships go by?
I’ve looked through news reports and found a couple reports that it’s been “partially refloated”. Not exactly sure what they mean by that.
I don’t think there’s enough room in that section of the canal for two large ships to pass each other. They widened the canal a few years ago, but not the whole thing. This is one of the one-way sections.