Recent and related:<p><i>Suez canal blocked by a massive ship</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26560319" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26560319</a> - March 2021 (419 comments)<p>Also ongoing:<p><i>Is that ship still stuck?</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26585282" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26585282</a> - March 2021 (446 comments)<p><i>Suez Canal: How are they trying to free the Ever Given?</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26586278" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26586278</a> - March 2021 (44 comments)
A good explanation of what's involved in fixing the situation by gCaptain (video - 25m)<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqLcplXYHdA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqLcplXYHdA</a>
Here's my idea. I'm not an engineer.<p>First, hook up several tugboats. Second, put a couple of big ships on each side of the Ever Given, maybe a couple miles out. At the count of 3, the big ships haul ass towards the middle. It creates a huge wave that floats the Ever Given up away from the sand, and the tugboats pull it out.<p>It might be slightly dangerous.
what surprises me is that everybody seems surprised this could happen. the ever given isn't the only container ship with the potential of blocking that canal.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_sh...</a><p>I'm not in this business so I personally never thought about it. but it seems analogous to not maintaining backups with billions of dollars at stake.<p>can't wait to watch the Netflix special about how they did it.
They could just cut the bulbous bow part off, and sail the ship out of the canal without it. Ships have watertight bulkheads in case the bow is breached.<p>Cut everything they can from the inside, seal the bulkhead, then cut the outer hull from the outside, and bob's your uncle.<p>Then they could leave the bow embedded there as a reminder to others not to f* up.
I'm wondering what how this will affect the world economy? There are estimates that usually there goes 9.6 billion dollars worth of cargo through the canal daily [0]. That means every minute it is blocked costs 4.7 million dollars. I'd guess some shipping companies have already started going around Africa. How much delay does that add and what are it's possible effects for Europe's supply chain?<p>0: <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/3/25/suez-blockage-seen-halting-9-6-billion-a-day-of-ship-traffic" rel="nofollow">https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/3/25/suez-blockage-se...</a>
I know that boat is huge and that excavator is probably bigger than it looks, but why haven't they sent for a larger one or at least a second one? Seems like two operators should be able to coordinate there just fine.
Back in my childhood in the 70-80's era lets say there was a question on an IQ test about just this problem.<p>A ship carrying a bunch of barrels of oil or whatnot is in a lock and needs to be unloaded. There is no crane and people are lazy. Given the current distance between the deck of the ship and the ground, the current draft of the ship and the triangle of its hull, and the shape and level of water in the lock....<p>How many barrels do you have to push over the side to lighten the boat and also raise level of water in the lock until you can unload the rest of the barrels by rolling them down a ramp to shore?<p>Seal up the topmost closest to density of water containers, attatch a line to them,push them off to lighten the ship and raise the level of water in the lock until the ship floats. Retrieve the cargo later. heh.<p>Then again, I couldn't figure out the correct answer to that spherical cow question back then and probably still can't.<p>You could also maybe flood the lock with oil which should be plentiful as long as it's still dense enough to be lighter than the ship. Let the ship float away on oil until it's straightened out, then clean up the oil mess and Bob's your uncle.<p>If only spherical cows.
I've been reading costs estimates related to the situation and pretty much all of them are in Billions of USD.<p>If that's the case, can't they just bomb the ship and be over with it? Maybe don't even bother to unload the cargo, take the fuel and oil out, take the potentially hazardous materials out, take the high value and easily movable items out, destroy the blockage and start a clean up effort with priority of just opening the passage.<p>Too blunt? Well, that's how we deal with blockages all the time. Probably it is is within the realm of the military tech and operational capabilities, just a matter of cost and time making sense.
If you could pump a lot of water at high pressure and release it just off the bank where the boat is stuck you might be able to scour away the underbank while at the same time creating a slightly higher hydraulic head, kind of a standing wave or mound of water, that may float that end of the ship higher. The hydraulic jump may cause suction or cavitation that would make it harder to free the boat though.
I wonder, could you liquify the soil around the buried part of the ship by pumping air into the surrounding areas?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction</a>
> Tugboats — the largest capable of towing 160 tons<p>Is this a typo or have they conflated pull strength with weight? Most tugboats can obviously pull far bigger ships than that.