The Suez Canal is currently not blocked
- Thread starter Malevolence
- Start date
So a couple of afternoons work then.
Absolutely spot on, days/weeks and indeed months sometimes, at sea, bored out of your mind to put it mildly.I imagine living on a Cargo freighter to be exactly like living on an oil rig. IE boring AF, mind numbing, monotonous noise.
Depending on your crew you could be eating curry with your hands for every meal
Someone said a floating Butlins... lol deffo 1990s furniture ftw.
Honestly not a romantic experience at all. Probably -50x slower and 5x more expensive than a flight too..
A mate of mine did a two year traveling stint and got passage on a few container ships , he described it as fascinating from his perspective but for the regular crew for whom it was their day in day out, he wondered about quite a few of them mentally, I guess huge lengths of monotony and boredom does little good for the mind.
That said he was planning a similar jaunt ore covid so it couldn’t have been all bad ,for him at least.
One of those things which varies hugely person to person - some go out of their minds almost literally if they have to spend an afternoon with just themselves for company, others like myself can do weeks of it fine - especially if I have a laptop/PC with me and can lose myself for hours in various projects like coding (but not a pre-requisite).
EDIT: I watched a few YT videos on the subject after seeing this thread - amazing how many travellers struggled with it just doing 6-10 days never mind longer.
The American government looked at making on in Israel using nuclear bombs for the excavation! It would be easier if the canal wasn’t owned and run by a third world country.
Not 120 miles.
The total from distance Port Said to Suez (as a crow might fly) is 150km (93 miles).
However, the part of the canal from Port Said to Great Bitter Lake is already twin canal AFAIK, so to upgrade the canal to be twin the whole way would only involve a trench from Suez to the southern tip of the lake.
Which is "only" about 25km (again as the crow flies). I imagine they were considering that for capacity, now they might do it for redundancy too.
Soldato
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I believe the problem with both winching and towing is that the pulling power required to move such a huge ship would just pull the ship apart. There are no anchor points on the ship strong enough to avoid being simply ripped off the ship.
Permabanned
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The shear size of the thing is mind blowing
Surely there are anchor winches. Or do the tugs do the anchor lifts?
Soldato
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The queue of boats was 40 miles long at the southern end, one of them has got some chips on there has to be
absolute chonk of a boat, only 3 years launched and already failing to the point of crashing. Seaworthy ?
absolute chonk of a boat, only 3 years launched and already failing to the point of crashing. Seaworthy ?
The vessel, yes. The crew... remains to be seen. It was involved in a collision in 2019 (wind again) which raises concerns over the Watch understanding of weather and colregs.
Soldato
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Looks like its been freed now. Vesselfinder shows it facing north and moving of it own accord
Is it bigger than normal cargo ships?
Soldato
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Crikey the number of tugs following it, I bet that driver is a bit shakey at the wheel
It's among the bigger ones, but about the going rate for container ships.
Yes, it's currently the biggest I believe in its load capacity. Problem is when fully loaded it can't course correct when side wind hits it effectively.
A perfect illustration of the difficulty of finding information on the internet
Caporegime
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Its been freed, now being pulled through.