The Suez Canal is currently not blocked

dl8860 said:
Genuinely wondering if some sort of dismantling and piece-small removal is the way forward.

Depends on value of cargo and liabilities etc. vs the difference in cost/effort between dismantling carefully and torpedoing the thing.
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This happened in my teenage years in the village I grew up in. Quite a busy port as it is slap bang in the middle of the mouth on the east coast of England. They ended up cutting it up. Obviously not as big as that tanker but still pretty big none the less. It took several weeks as well!

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watercooledman said:
500k to pass through geez, how much does the shipping company make with all those containers and drugs on board ?
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Shipping costs are currently running north of 5000gbp per container. Evergreen carries 20k containers, so the lower estimate would be 100million gbp.
 
watercooledman said:
Wow mind blowing
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Yeah - and that's just shipping costs - it doesn't account for the value of the actual goods in the containers. One container can hold 20m worth of mobile phones, then the shipping containers are 20k each themselves. The average insurance cover for a mixed freight cargo ship of evergreen size is 400 million.
 
amigafan2003 said:
Yeah - and that's just shipping costs - it doesn't account for the value of the actual goods in the containers. One container can hold 20m worth of mobile phones, then the shipping containers are 20k each themselves. The average insurance cover for a mixed freight cargo ship of evergreen size is 400 million.
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Madness mind is blown, I would love to be a crew member or even better title. The waters and these huge vessels really intrigue me.
 
watercooledman said:
Madness mind is blown, I would love to be a crew member or even better title. The waters and these huge vessels really intrigue me.
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You can go and be a passenger on a container ship (when we're not in covid times of course), quite a few providers that sell packages.

It's not especially cheap, but cheaper than cruise ships....and much more peaceful, I've always been tempted to do it, but never got round to it.

London -> Adelaide, 45 nights. EUR 6k PP
 
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As I work with a lot of ex-captains and seafarers, they have been speculating on what happened.

The Engineers reckon that Deckies were distracted by the biscuits getting too soggy and falling in their tea whereas the Deckies think the Engineers were in control while they were catching some sun.

I hear a lot of stories in the industry, most of which you won't get away with now.
My favourite involves driving rally cars around the hold whilst under the influence. The damage was blamed on freak weather.
Gives you an idea of the size of these things.
 
Hotwired said:
20,000 shipping containers of goods is a ridiculous amount.

Also the suez canal people like to extort bribes on top which the shipping companies know about and pay because the ships cost tens of thousands per day just existing and getting getting an official "delay" by not paying petty bribes isn't worth it.
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Saw this on Reddit )
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catastroph...suez_canal_authority_on_the/gs63hp0?context=3

Egypt is a joke. I've been through the canal a bunch on container ships like this. It's really unprofessional how it's handled. They'll send like 5 or 6 people on board when you really only need 2 pilots, the other guys are just there to set up little shops in the crew lounge and collect a payday. They'll all ask for cigarettes, and the captain will give them all cartons so nothing untoward happens. The bosun told us to lock our doors, stuff had gone missing a lot. Someone gets a **** ton of money for this operation, but it's not plowed back into the canal infrastructure or the people running it. Pilot boats were like wooden 1940s put puts. Also their tugs were the most dangerous I've ever worked with anywhere. You send them some rope so you can dock, it's route as big as your arm btw. They'll ask for more than they need, then once it's made off back up as quickly as possible hoping to snap it so they can resell it. You'll see pallets on their decks of new line remnants from other ships. Personally seen them part two lines, one nearly hit an AB. Poverty is messed up.
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It's been happening for since forever. The company has a budget for it, it's just cost of doing business. Gotta grease the wheels. They send an "electrician" who's supposed to help in case the crew of 12 engineers who have been running the systems need help? He also gets a stateroom so he can go nap the whole transit. If you mess with the or don't give them their ciggies they'll radio into central, and magically your vessel can drop places in line, be delayed, etc. Honestly 20 cartons of smokes isn't a big deal compared to how much you pay. And it's not like their official salary's are great, their pretty desperate and clearly don't have a ton of cash. The money paid to the country doesn't filter down to the guys running it.
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mid_gen said:
You can go and be a passenger on a container ship (when we're not in covid times of course), quite a few providers that sell packages.

It's not especially cheap, but cheaper than cruise ships....and much more peaceful, I've always been tempted to do it, but never got round to it.

London -> Adelaide, 45 nights. EUR 6k PP
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Ok where do I sign up. Genuine request.
 
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