Ah, yes, but Why? That is the question!
It was dam release day this weekend. Most kayakers went right, a few went left. One guy went straight
This isn’t a pleasure boat that ran aground, and the tide isn’t going to do much for it. As Princhester says above, it’s a completely different situation from the Ever Given, and will be much more difficult to free up.
They’re currently trying to dig it out, which is a lot of mud to move. I assume they will also need to offload most, if not all, of the containers to other ships. The Slate article linked below says that could take several weeks.
The center of the Ever Given always remained afloat in the Suez Canal. Only the tips of the ship were on land—the front had run aground, and the back was wedged against the side of the canal. To get the boat out, dredgers dug out mud and sand from underneath both ends, and tugboats wiggled it free.
That’s not an option with the Ever Forward, which is resting in mud, from front to back, several hundred feet from the deeper waters where it was supposed to stay. Normally, when it floats, the ship’s lowest point is about 42 feet under the surface of the water. The water where the Ever Forward currently sits is between 17 and 24 feet deep.
“She’s literally on land, entirely, so you can’t just pull her backwards out. It’s not going to work that way,” said Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and current professor of maritime history at Campbell University. “You’re going to have to lighten her up, try to get some weight off her.”
Is/was he trying to jump off the high point?
nope, he was stuck…hard! It was a real good drop to the left, under where I was standing & an easier drop to the right side. You can see his hands are on the rock below him. He eventually rocked himself free, I just think he decided to change which side of the rock he was going to go down too late.
There has to be more to it than this because it’s just not physically possible.
To achieve this, the ship has to go aground so fast and so hard that it literally lifted itself about 20 feet up.
As I understand it, the formula for velocity required to reach a certain height is very simple it’s just √(2GH) which works out to about 21 knots to lift the vessel 20 feet. That’s ignoring friction which would of course in reality be considerable. It just isn’t possible. The vessel isn’t capable of more than about 13 knots.
I would say the draft figures are wrong.
I think it’s possible depending on how you define “bottom”. The muck could start at 17 feet and extend down 30 feet or more before you hit anything solid.
Yes they call that “navigable mud”. But if that’s the case then the vessel won’t be as lacking in bouyancy as the figures would suggest
You’re likely right on the buoyancy. Since that Slate article was written, the plan is to attempt to free it without offloading the containers, but instead by dredging around the sides, stern and the path back to the deep-water channel. They have what is supposedly the largest dredge in the western hemisphere, with a 60-yard bucket. That’s enormous - one bucket could fill 5 full-size dump trucks.
Wonder what it’s going to cost to free the ship? And will there be fines in addition?
Whether any offences have been commited depends.
At least in my experience fines merely for suffering a navigational incident are rare although perhaps theoretically possible. Bear in mind there was a pilot on board, and for all we know the vessel could have suffered a steering failure, and if so we don’t know why. Most such offences would involve having to prove (at least) negligence if not gross negligence or recklessness.
There are more commonly fines for pollution, and for entering or damaging environmentally protected areas. AFAIK there is no pollution yet and on a soft bottom there probably won’t be. So that leaves the issue of whether the vessel has committed an environmental offence. And on that I have no idea.
That’s what my husband has said. I suppose unless there’s evidence of drunken tomfoolery on the bridge, it was probably just a really embarrassing, unfortunate accident.
It’s being rather stubborn about staying where it is, TYVM. Guess it likes Chesapeake Bay.
Mud sucks
The second attempt yesterday with an extra tug also failed. Next try will be April 3 or 4. If that doesn’t work, they probably have to start unloading cargo to lighten it.
They’ve decided to unload the 5k containers aboard, which is probably going to take a couple of weeks.
Holy mackeral, but that thing is stuck good.
I take a particular interest in these things and I’ll be interested to read the final reports on how it happened. It is quite surprising just how far and high aground she has gone.
I can’t remember where I saw it, but when the Ever Given was in the news, I read it had a complicated status wrt. whose ship it was. IRC there was one company that owned the ship, another that leased it, a german “management company” and yet another company that sold the container space. Is that true, and is that normal for cargo ships. E.g Mærsk, I always thought that was one company, with daughter companies of course?
Read my first post in this thread