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Comment by rwhitman | Hacker News Reader

I recently got sucked up watching videos of this on YouTube. From what I can tell they just run them at top speed directly onto the beach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kDbwE7mFck

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It initially seems like it would be difficult to so comprehensively beach a ship but that impression may be in part due to the fact that normally the ship's crew would be trying to avoid being beached. In other situations when a ship is beached we are seeing a ship that did everything it could to avoid or at least minimize the situation.

Not that surprising really that the outcome is very different if the crew point the ship directly at the beach, try to arrive with as much momentum as possible and keep the engines at full power throughout while ignoring the various bumps and thumps.

In addition, I assume, the ships being beached are empty- no cargo, very little fuel, probably stripped of a lot of normal equipment. They'll have a much shallower draft than a laden ship.

That would make sense. Removing any cargo is a no brainer. It also seems to make sense to have as little fuel as possible and to have already removed any high value equipment that doesn't absolutely need to still be on the ship for its final journey.

All together that means the ship could potentially be significantly lighter than its usual unloaded weight let alone its weight when loaded.

Ships normally carry ballast water when not loaded. All ships are mandated to have double hulls. Ballast and fuel tanks can be located in that space.

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