nit pick: drug smugglers manage to routinely falsify source and destination.
Clearly all they need to do is drive of one of those big German Bucket-Wheel Excavators down there and dig out around the ship. They’ll be done in a hour or so.
Problem solved, I’ll just have myself a drink while the transport logicians deal with the other trivial issues.
Faster solution:
Problem solved. I’ll just have myself a drink while the aeronautical engineers deal with the trivial upscaling issues.
They’ve given up for the night and will try again tomorrow:
Suez Canal latest: Ever Given rescue efforts suspended with traffic still blocked - CityAM : CityAM
“Rescue efforts to move a giant container ship that has blocked the Suez Canal since yesterday were suspended this evening. Authorities in Egypt said they will resume the operation tomorrow morning.
Although the ship was partially refloated this afternoon, the 200,000-tonne MV Ever Given is still unable to turn around despite several refloating attempts. Strong winds are thought to be to blame for the ship’s grounding, according to its owners.
At present, traffic along the waterway in Egypt is still blocked in both directions by the 59m-wide cargo ship.”
I wonder how many times this ship as been through the canal?
If the blockage goes on for too long, might some of the stuck-in-traffic ships decide to just go the long way and re-route around Africa to get to Asia? Or do they not have enough fuel?
They could get more fuel if they wanted to.
They didn’t come strapped to the roof of the truck cab? With disassembly instructions?
No, they did not. Although I once had an idea that shipping containers should be designed so they can be knocked down into panels consisting of the walls, ceiling and floor. That way, empty containers can be transported in less space.
Hopefully, after this is over, the Egyptians will widen the Canal so that its width will never be less than the maximum length of an incoming ship.
It’s an idea that has been raised previously and there may even be examples available. A problem you have though is that a standard ISO container must have certain tight dimensional tolerances, and ability to withstand various forces, so they can lock together and be stacked.
And your knocked down container would also need to fit a particular spec, when knocked down, so it too could be stacked.
No doubt it would be do-able, but suspect that you might find the returns don’t justify the expense and complication.
The cost/benefit would be dubious at best.
And someone will build a larger ship and/or give it a more inept crew.
To a certain extent, though, cargo ships are built to be just large enough for the canals, as with the Panamax ships.
I believe it was built for the Europe - Asia trade which involves a round trip of about ten weeks. It’s about three years old. So that’s about 30 through-and-back passages.
Since I live in the desert where we get up to 60+ mph winds on an almost daily basis and those flatbed train cars filled with those things tip over I can see this happening …
They did, in 2014 to 2015. The old one is now being used to divert traffic to while the new one is blocked by the Ever Given.
Note that Panamax is the largest that could fit through the old canal locks. Neopanamax or New Panamax fit the new Panama Canal locks. There’s a whole set of maximum dimensions for various sea lanes and ports: cargo ship size categories, including Suezmax, which this ship is probably close to.
There’s The Infamous Truck-Eating Bridge in Davenport, Iowa.
One of the early 2020 trucks was full of toilet paper. A local charity prints up a calendar every year featuring these trucks, and sells it as a fundraiser.
p.s. I don’t think anyone has mentioned that the toll for the Suez Canal averages $700,000 for a large container ship.