Election 2020 Another Ship has Run Aground in the Suez Canal

[Bacle]

Tanker refloated after breakdown in Egypt's Suez Canal

Tug boats refloated an oil tanker that was briefly stranded in Egypt's Suez Canal late on Wednesday after to a technical fault with its rudder, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said.

www.reuters.com

Well, the world's supply chains just got another unhappy jolt.

 

[Robovski]

Like, are they doing it on purpose? Is someone making it worthwhile to the captain or the owner? Not a lot of bobbing and weaving to do here, mostly it's go straight what with it being a canal and all.

 

[LordSunhawk]

it's actually a thing in narrow channels like that, if you drift too far to one side you'll have your stern pulled towards the bank, while your bow swings out. It's called the bank effect, there's this wonderful video from Casual Navigation about it which shows how it works.

 

[Typhonis]

Also how tall was the ship and what were the winds like at the time?

 

[LordSunhawk]

The winds don't actually matter in this regard. If you look at the plot, the channel is narrower than the ship is long, therefore bank effect will be the primary driver here. Note, that usually this is used to the advantage of shipping in such channels, if you watch ships in the Suez (and the Houston Ship Channel) you'll see them seemingly playing chicken with each other, what they are actually doing is using bank effect to allow them to pass safely in extremely confined waters.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Update on this. The ship suffered a steering malfunction and grounded. After 5 hours it was refloated with no issue and is heading in under tow for repairs