I read that one major problem with offloading containers is that you'd have to do it evenly to keep the weight distributed. If they just removed the ones they can reach near the bow and stern the middle part would become too heavy and break the hull. The bow and stern are totally grounded. So cranes and helicopters working together? Should be fine. But I guess they're dredging too. What a mess.
There's been some hilarious memes about all this on a positive note.
Before you start wondering "well why aren't they doing this and that", I think it's good to consider the scale of the situation.
That thing weights upwards of 200.000 tons. It ran to ground with enough momentum to wedge it about 15 metres into sand and lift the front of the ship up at least a meter (or maybe several meters, it's hard to say from the pictures). To say it will take a lot of power to move that thing is putting it very mildly
There's only about 9 metres of water under the ship at the deepest spot. Even if you did try to sink it, the water would reach maybe halfway up the side of the ship. Plus obviously you can't sink a ship that's already partially resting on the sand.
There are 10-20.000 containers on board with no cranes around or any other supporting infrastructure. It takes around 2 days to unload these things in the best of conditions. Did I mention sand? The shores are made of sand.
Possibly the least interesting, but still somewhat interesting, part is the value of the cargo, which is estimated to be maybe around 100M, although could be significantly more or less depending on what exactly it happens to be. The ship itself is worth about 170M and it's brand new, so there's going to be an attempt to get it out mostly unharmed. (Although this probably isn't much of an issue anyway; the ship is so large and there's so many containers that it's obviously optimal if you can just get the ship loose, at least enough so that you could drag it back to the nearest dock which is just at the end of the canal.)
So no rush in thinking of clever memes, the (No Effs) Ever Given is likely to be right where it is for a good while
(My guess is the effort is going to be a combination of lifting some containers off the front of the ship with cranes from the shore, some digging and a lot of tow boats.)
Last edited by Itse; 03-26-2021 at 03:55 PM.
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No helicopter in the world can lift a fully loaded container, and while not all of them are going to be fully loaded, since the Ever Given doesn't have it's own cranes to move containers around, its very limited what could be done that way. There's also a lot of risk involved.
Unless the lighter containers tend to be at the top I guess?
Floating cranes do exist, and probably heading that way right now, but they're very slow.
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