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Comment by adrianmonk | Hacker News Reader

I'm a layman, but it seems like there are probably other preventative measures that are way cheaper.

A Bloomberg article (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-27/how-a-des...) says the speed limit was 7.6 to 8.6 knots but the Ever Given was traveling at 13.5 knots. So maybe they need to start enforcing that limit.

Reportedly this was during high winds, so they could also reduce the speed limit even further in those conditions.

Or they could have Suez specialists be the ones piloting large ships through the canal rather than the ship's normal crew. (As I understand it, that's pretty standard for harbors. Not sure if the Suez already does that.)

Or maybe there's a technology solution, something like stability control for cars, except it's for ships in narrow canals.

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The slower the boat travels, the closer to the wind it has to point in order to avoid being pushed into the leeward shore. (assuming it doesn't have significant thrust-vectoring capabilities at both the bow and the stern which as far as I can tell seems to be the case for large cargo ships)

Because the boat is longer than the canal is wide, for any nonzero perpendicular wind speed there is a minimum boat speed below which it would not be able to avoid running aground. The solution is to either not permit such large ships to transit the canal during high wind events or to send them with enough tugboats to counteract the force of the wind.

As is standard for canal transit, the Evergiven was piloted by a Suez pilot at the time of the accident. Because this ship's main steering force comes from the rudder, it has more force when it goes faster. Maybe they even accelerated to counter the strong winds.

Navigating canals and major harbours requires a pilot.

Pilot was on board, but there seems to have been some kind of conflict between Master and Pilot that resulted in high tension environment on the bridge.

Ever Given Master’s statement is published here, and has been circulating among the crews for a few days: http://www.maritimebulletin.net/2021/03/28/ever-given-latest...

So, some weird drama. If this is true, however, this would be a gross misconduct of behalf of the Pilot.

I don't see how the report in the linked article is related to Ever Given. It certainly isn't of the fateful trip because it's about a southbound journey.

It contains a report of the behavior of the local Pilots that are supposed guide the ship through the canal.

Last line before the report

>Read this Statement and ask yourself – can such incident lead to accident like grounding or collision?

If the professionals are not doing their job and even causing issues on the bridge;

i.e. >As soon as the master picked up the VHF and called Ismalia Port Control on Ch8, the pilot raised his volume high, started shouting, snatched the VHF from the master’s hand (which also resulted in advertently pushing the Master) and threatened that if same was reported “It will not be good for the vessel”.

>At that very moment, in his raised volume he called for fwd and aft stations and for both anchors to be lowered to water level, as he insisted on stopping the vessel and arresting vessel for faulty steering. He said vessel will be held at Bitter lake until sea trials were carried out. Fwd station was immediately manned however anchors were not lowered as ship was doing 9 knots speed.

Then it could lead to accidents.

I find that the difficult conditions at the time are sufficient to explain the accident. Maybe we'll learn that there was unprofessional behaviour by a pilot. But until such time, that is unwarranted speculation.

The linked article is a hodgepodge of random factoids and hearsay. It even confused the poster into thinking the report was from the Ever Given. Doesn't look like a good source to me.

From what I heard they’ve suffered a blackout which is an event when your power goes out.

Friends scientific boat had a same thing in Kiel canal, but only 22 meter boat and under and hour.

>it seems like there are probably other preventative measures that are way cheaper.

Like doing nothing, and sailing around Africa in the extremely rare case there's a problem.

Makes me think of: https://xkcd.com/1205/

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