Authorities are trying to find the little man in the boat but so far there have been no results.
Little man.... Check East Lansing area?
r/woooosh
Google "little man in the boat"... but not on your work computer and with safe search off.
I thought this was common knowledge. No wonder it went over like a fart in church.
I started a reply to him right after the post, but deleted it instead. That joke went over his ‘head’.
Kids these days. Seesh.
The memes from this are so perfect.
can you share a couple? i can see the opportunity for humor.
as an aside, i had no idea that those things are an actual 400 meter/quarter mile long ship. and they hold 20,000 containers, containers being 24' long metal boxes. i'm sure those bad boys must lose containers into the ocean when it's rough. i bet there are many thousands of them in davy jones' locker.
In this case, the humor might be dry...
Some containers are 40’!
true re: container sizes can be 40, also. but what i saw appeared to be 24' all the way across
Here are a number of good ones (after a very brief googles):
One favorite:
"Love the guys earnestly replying to Suez Canal tweets with ways to get the boat unstuck, like men standing around a 400 meter long pickle jar."
LOL, thanks for posting those.
Not in that list, but I chuckled at one I saw a couple days ago that suggested calling a doctor after 4 hours.
What, no more Suez Canal jokes??? I guess that ship has sailed.
thanks. many good ones in there. the q-tip one might be my favorite.
for the ships that routed around africa's cape of good hope, that can be some very treacherous water. i'd have waited in the suez.
i'm sure those bad boys must lose containers into the ocean when it's rough.
Just this last December was a doozy
interesting. those all look like 40' containers. what a mess and i would love to know the nautical engineering that would keep those boats from capsizing with all that high-centered weight.
So I went to the flightradar24 version for shipping today to see what the backup @ the Suez on the map looked like. It was just a blip, no pun intended, compared to 1,000s of vessels like that at sea all across the globe.
Makes me wonder if we need all the shit we consume?!
In the next several decades as the oceans warm, the Suez may lose much of it’s importance as northern sea routes become more cost effective.
March 30th, 2021 at 10:02 AM ^
Only if you’re shipping from Northern Europe to Asia.
March 30th, 2021 at 12:29 PM ^
Here is a pretty extensive comparison of the costs from Yokohama to Hamburg via the Suez vs three alternative routes.
http://www.arctis-search.com/Arctic+Shipping+Routes+-+Cost+Comparisons+with+Suez
Not all container ships are as huge as this one. This ship is one of the very largest. Even though they just widened the Panama Canal, this one still wouldn't fit through it. This particular ship was designed for the Asia to Europe route through the Suez. Other not as huge container ships can now get through the Panama Canal and reach the U.S. East Coast. This will help save a lot in shipping cost/time in the future, especially as East Coast port facilities are upgraded to handle the larger ships with more containers.
The reasons this one got stuck were a combination of the really strong 40 mph wind storm they experienced combined with the enormously huge area of the side of the ship that's above the waterline. That's A LOT of force pushing the ship sideways. The engines and thrusters aren't powerful enough to overcome it.
I wasn't driving, honest.
Perhaps that was the problem!
Who exactly was driving?
Just in. It was MeanJoe07.
That bastard!
Aww hell naw man. MeanJoe07 could parallel park that thing in a typhoon.
His brain is too smooth to operate stuff. It's science.
MeanJoe07 is probably saying to himself, "It's rough enough to operate your mom."
I'm sorry its just really fun channeling my inner MeanJoe07. lol
:-) it's ok. MeanJoe07 is still angry my mother dumped him for John O'Neill.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned in the media: exactly whose screw-up caused this?
i saw a mention of a desert sand storm. i can see a single screw vessel having a tough time in a cross wind, especially with containers stacked 20 high on their deck like a giant metal sail pulling it sideways.
It never ceases to amaze me that a ship like this operates on one shaft. Massive redundancy fail, not to mention making it difficult to drive. Single-screw ships always tend to one side.
I don't believe for a minute that a gust of wind blew 400,000+ tons worth of ship and cargo into the side of the canal. But it could have affected the steering. The way that ship is loaded - more containers aft than forward - means the ship will handle counterintuitively in the wind. You'd think you'd have to steer into the wind to compensate for the wind pushing you away - but if there's more freeboard aft of the pivot point, which looks like the case here, then the ship will turn into the wind in every gust. A helmsman who didn't understand that could easily have accidentally driven the ship into the mud. That plus the ship's natural tendency to turn one direction....well, that's why you need an experienced helmsman in the canal, and these ships don't really have one because they spend most of their time on autopilot.
March 29th, 2021 at 10:08 PM ^
Yeah, these aren't Great Lakes freighters where the crew is well seasoned at tight maneuvering. These ocean vessels do everything on autopilot and rely on harbormaster when entering/exiting ports.
When ships transit “the ditch” you must hire an Egyptian Captain to pilot the boat through. It’s one of the rare times a US Navy CO gives up control of his ship.
I’d say that Captain is probably retiring in the near future.
Captain Joseph Hazelwood, Jr. Excellence in piloting a large boat runs in the family.
The real screw-up is: when you are losing $400 million/hr, why don't you have at least 50 tug boats and/or 50 dredges working to get this free.
I understand there is limited space to work in, but looking at some of the pictures, there did not appear to be many support boats in the area. Why isn't the canal at least 10000 feet deep. Moving sand/dirt can't be more expensive than $400 million/hr.
With all the $$$$$ that flows through there, those recovery #'s would be a minimum.
Why do I see a 2nd channel in the future?
JMO
Egypt is not losing $400 million an hour. Nobody is, really. The only money Egypt loses is from ships that would've gone through the canal and decided to divert. Hard to say how much that is. Maybe you're getting that number from the $9 billion of commerce that goes through there daily. But as much as people like to play up the "global commerce shutting down" angle, two things:
- The global GDP is $83.8 trillion, or $229.7 billion daily, so $9 billion isn't much.
- There are 56,000 merchant ships in the world and about 150 of them waiting to get through the canal.
There already is a second channel in some places, but it's not to prevent this from happening; it's to reduce waiting time for two-way traffic.
"Egypt is not losing $400 million an hour. Nobody is, really."
False. Business Interruption losses due to this will be enormous. The ship's owner is reported to carry $3 billion of insurance; speculation is that will not be enough. This is why there is insurance but multiple insurance companies will get hit hard and the ship's owner is destined to get tagged pretty significantly as well.
Yes, but the canal was blocked for six and a half days, which is 156 hours, which would add up to $62.4 billion in losses at $400 million an hour.
The $400 million figure comes from a Lloyd's List estimate of the value of goods not flowing through the canal, which is delays, not losses. Losses will be large - but they will not even approach that size. By nominal GDP, that's a figure bigger than the economies of more than half the world's countries.
I agree with your new position that "Losses will be large" not "Egypt is not losing $400 million an hour. Nobody is, really." But the additional comment that delays are somehow different than losses remains incorrect. Delays are causing massive losses. For one, there will be a substantial impact on manufacturing as factories sit idle or at reduced capacity. That causes losses to the owners of the manufacturers and any laborers who are furloughed. Oil has gone up significantly causing anyone using oil-based products a loss - think of all the train and truck traffic who are paying more now at the pump. These are real losses. Maybe not to the $62B number, but massive losses.
March 30th, 2021 at 10:27 AM ^
There is really no way to add up all the losses to $400 million an hour. You are saying "there will be massive losses" and trying to equate that to the specific figure I said would not happen, and even agreeing it will not happen while simultaneously not agreeing. The combined losses to this will not even approach $62.4 billion. Very generously, it might be $10 billion.
In my day (1971-75) students had to pay for the Daily. Is that still true?
It’s been free for a long time.
Suez Canal boat jokes are old.
That ship has sailed....
I am amazed that the oil industry didn't take the opportunity to jack prices 10%, citing supply interruptions. That's how they would've done it 30 years ago. They're getting soft.
And yes, I'm being mostly sarcastic. I'm jaded by years of sudden gas price jumps when someone steps on a butterfly someplace.
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Breaking News: Oatmeal Prices to Skyrocket
There, Brimley---satisfied now?