Entertaining Container Ship Video

Lounge
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(1) BBC documentaire over Ever Given in Suez kanaal - YouTube

This video might give some insight as to the real operational concerns of container ships

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Suez canal only 12 meters deep!

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Maybe they just need someone with a barge pole to guide these baotys along

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Yeah, or tie some old tires along the side.
Or wait - why didn’t they just use a kite to pull the ship free?
Better yet, if it had been pulled by a kite, it probably would have never gotten stuck! :slight_smile:

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What I find interesting in this video are:

  1. high winds caused the ship to go out of control and get stuck in the Suez Canal. This tells us sideways wind forces are already problemmatic for container ships;
  2. any delay in a container ship’s voyage is extremely costly;
  3. Container ships are already orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than other transport methods;
  4. Loaded Container Ships and their stacks of containers present a dangerous amount of surface area to the wind as it is now;
  5. A fully-loaded container ship appears to have little-to-no space left on deck for mounting a kite system;
  6. I will say here and now, such a container ship traveling across the wind would already enjoy some forward push from the wind if we look at the entire ship and its containers as a low-aspect-ratio airfoil traveling across the wind;
    I would also note, as others have:
  7. The reactive forces of the hull, rudder, etc. produce drag that lowers the efficiency of any attempt at kite-pulling or flettner/magnus sailing.
  8. Any extra crap sticking up from the ship has mass on a lever arm that slows the ship by its added weight, while promoting listing and possible capsize, in addition to adding wind resistance when traveling upwind, reducing any perceived advantage or energy savings.
    :slight_smile: