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Wheres that kit I ordered ?


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3 hours ago, stever219 said:

Moving the five heaviest crew members, all the beer and the spare gas bottles to the blunter end also works well on canals in the UK (how do I know this.........?)

As the blunt end is well and truly aground as well, any variation on moving stuff from one end to the other isn't going to help.

Most ships are "dry" now, so I doubt there'd be much in the way of beer to shift either.

De-ballasting is an option, but being fully laden there's probably not much of that on board, ditto bunker fuel as she was heading to Rotterdam the worlds favourite bunker port. Deballasting also has biohazard environmental issues, may affect stability and also affects bending moments (but they're probably through the roof now as she's fast at both ends) 

There's the option of dredging, there's dredgers permanently in the canal but they'd have to be moved into position and set up, and that's assuming there's one available on the side of the ship that needs dredging....

Lifting boxes off is also an option, but they need to find a floating crane with the height and reach to lift them, and they'll need to shift a lot of them to make a significant difference to the draft. All the ones on the top will be empties or lights, the heavy ones are all at the bottom of the stacks (or they should be). An empty 20 footer weighs just over 3 tons, and they'll need to lighten by several thousand tons....

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I remember the Suez canal being a lot longer than in the above picture but it sure is wide!!

 

The Pilots at the anchorage outside Port Said will be making a small fortune in booze and cigarettes from vessels wanting to jump the queue to join the first convoys when it reopens.

 

Duncan B

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41 minutes ago, Duncan B said:

The Pilots at the anchorage outside Port Said will be making a small fortune in booze and cigarettes from vessels wanting to jump the queue to join the first convoys when it reopens.

Not any more, there's been a big crackdown on that. Most ships don't have booze on anyway, and in most instances the pilot will go down the gangway with little more than he came up it with. 

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40 minutes ago, hairystick said:

Looking at the side view of the ship, notice the waterline?

That's a LOT of her out of the water and firmly aground at the bows!

Added to that she's holed in the bow, both the forepeak and bowthruster room are now flooded, so there's several hundred if not a couple of thousand tons of extra weight up there that wasn't there before she hit the bank. Salvors Smit are getting high capacity salvage pumps in to try and reduce this weight, there's a 2,000 cubic metre/hour dredger excavating around the port bow, plus there's two 220-240 ton bollard pull (mahoosive) tugs arriving on Sunday to assist in pulling her off. 

In short, they're doing everything humanly possible to ensure those Airfix Vulcans aren't delayed any more!

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2 minutes ago, Dave Swindell said:

In short, they're doing everything humanly possible to ensure those Airfix Vulcans aren't delayed any more!

 

Screw the Vulcans! Where's the danged Beauforts?

 

 

 

 

Chris

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2 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Well mines on my desk and Rabbit Leader is half way through building his, poor old postie has a long walk to the back of beyond! :wicked:

 

 

Yes, I know and I'm thoroughly P.O.'d too!

 

 

 

Chris

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3 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

plus there's two 220-240 ton bollard pull (mahoosive) tugs arriving on Sunday to assist in pulling her off. 

 

That's some serious dragging power.The harbour tugs used to handle this beastie in Felixstowe are only 60 tons BP. 2 or sometimes 3 if there is a strong wind broadside on.

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7 hours ago, bentwaters81tfw said:

That's some serious dragging power.The harbour tugs used to handle this beastie in Felixstowe are only 60 tons BP. 2 or sometimes 3 if there is a strong wind broadside on.

Exactly. They'll have to be careful what they tie up to as they're likely to rip it out of the deck with that pulling power.

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11 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Not any more, there's been a big crackdown on that. Most ships don't have booze on anyway, and in most instances the pilot will go down the gangway with little more than he came up it with. 

Changed days, last time I went through going south (which was in the last century to be fair, that makes me feel old!) they were openly negotiating on the radio for what we could give them! That was on a dry ship but had some booze in the bond for occasions like that. Coming north didn't seem to be a problem as I remember.

 

Duncan B

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10 hours ago, Duncan B said:

Changed days

Absolutely. Chalk and Cheese. My first transit was 1983, last was 2010 with loads in between, don't remember any difference between northbound and southbound, they were all out for as much as they could get away with, until the anti corruption campaign took effect in the late noughties. And if you think the canal was bad, Damietta was far worse...

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On 3/27/2021 at 10:10 AM, Dave Swindell said:

Added to that she's holed in the bow, both the forepeak and bowthruster room are now flooded, so there's several hundred if not a couple of thousand tons of extra weight up there that wasn't there before she hit the bank. Salvors Smit are getting high capacity salvage pumps in to try and reduce this weight, there's a 2,000 cubic metre/hour dredger excavating around the port bow, plus there's two 220-240 ton bollard pull (mahoosive) tugs arriving on Sunday to assist in pulling her off. 

In short, they're doing everything humanly possible to ensure those Airfix Vulcans aren't delayed any more!

I was wondering if they'd off-load fuel, as that's an easy solution compared to off-loading containers. 

Or perhaps add fuel aft? Either way there will be some effort requireed from those tugs, no matter how large they are!

 

I also note the canal authority stating there is more to it than "a bit of wind", so they are hinting at a crew stuff-up contributing to this debacle.

There is a wonderful satellite photo with the caption "when your work stuff-up is viewable from space"... :surprised:

Edited by hairystick
Spellink...
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Im sure there will be a massive enquiry into it.  Many things can happen to a ship that big, if you loose power, steering, engines etc even at a slow speed the mass is enough to bury it deep in the canal wall. Given the narrow width there would not have been a lot of time for the crew to react. I will wait and see as to what exactly happened. 

 

Shipping as a whole has pointed out the vulnerabilities of the canal for a while now to this type of event or others.

 

Offloading anything from a ship that size is difficult and you cant exactly just pump ballast out either as there are environmental constraints to that. Smit will solve the problem its what they do. 

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The major problem for the lines now is do you wait in the queue for the canal or divert round the Cape? it will throw all the schedules to bits. 

 

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