Observations concerning the current blockage of the Suez canal... A French company funded and built the canal. It is located in and belongs to Egypt who provided the pilot guiding the M/V Ever Given at the time of her stranding. Ever Given was built in Japan and is owned by a Japanese company. I believe her main engine is of German manufacture. She is managed by a Taiwanese ship management company and is registered in Panama. Her classification society is Panamanian. Her officers and crew are all Indian nationals. I don't know who insures the hull or cargo, probably Lloyds. The salvage company tasked with freeing her is Dutch. And believe me, folks, ALL of these people are yelling at each other in English!
Haha! One thing is clear from all of this. The Evergreen company has even worse naming conventions than colleges and universities. Here's the list of names: http://www.vesseltracking.net/carrier/carrier-ships/4 Ever Utile, Ever Unity, Ever Urban, Ever Unific, Ever Uranus, Ever Excel, Ever Smile, Ever Safety, Ever Liven, Ever Liberal, Ever Lenient, Ever Lissome, Ever Loading, Ever Lovely. It's really too bad that Ever Uranus wasn't the ship that got stuck. A couple of weeks with "Uranus Stuck in the Suez" and "Get Uranus Out of Here" would have been really fun. I think smart.ly would be a better ship name anyway. "Ship it smart.ly"
And now the Turks are offering the use of their Nene Hatun vessel to help out. She is apparently a salvage rescue ship. I don't know what her capabilities might be above those of the Dutch salvage vessels.
Heh, although Ever Safety would have provided a lot of mirth as well. And I suppose Ever Liberal would have provided it for some people.
Well! Now the Egyptian authorities are suggesting that a gust of wind wasn't the sole cause of the accident. I could have told them THAT. But they also say that the arse end is afloat again, a very important step. I gather that there's concern that simply yanking on the stern to pull the bow away from...from whatever it's stranded on, could overstress the hull. A nice, delicate 200,000 ton operation! Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post displays a photo of this gigantic container ship stuck at a weird angle while a farmer appears to be cutting hay in the foreground and loading it into his horse drawn wagon. The Middle East is a land of amazing contrasts.
Prediction: After they get the cork out of the bottle, I bet the Egyptians will start requiring ships above a certain size to be towed through the single lane parts of the canal.
Might be surprised if they go that route. The ongoing costs and delays would likely put a damper on their competitive advantage and revenue.
For some shipping routes, there are alternatives. But it really depends on the source and desination.
The fee to utilize the canal already can surpass the fuel and labor costs to navigate around Africa for many vessels, adding expenses and slowing the passage volume/time will make that alternative far more tempting.
Could Israel build a competing canal? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/suez-2-ever-given-grounding-prompts-plan-for-canal-along-egypt-israel-border
Long way around. Besides the original Portuguese name for the Cape of Good Hope was Cabo das Tormentas. There is a reason for that. But yes, the reason the world first started building super ships was to make that voyage economically viable when the Suez Canal was closed.
