Ship me somewheres east of Suez

[sovay]

My life remains a double-tracked medical cavalcade, but selkie has just informed me of the latest development in the Suez: "theyre actually doing it! ever given has been there so long that theyre actually going around the cape of good hope like 1700s scurvy patients oh my god."

I can only imagine how nervous the Panama Canal must be feeling right now. I just checked and thank God the dredging of Boston Harbor is proceeding on schedule. If we Storrowed a container ship, we'd never live it down.

P.S. The breeze coming through the window smells like the ocean; there was a gyre of seagulls visible above the roofs in the afternoon. It is coincidental but pleasant, considering all the chanteys I now have stuck in my head.

Comments

[sovay]

I... may possibly be feeling a bit smug that this particular bureaucratic choice has finally come back to bite someone in the ass, which is probably very wrong of me but there you have it.

No, as a late-breaking ass-bite, it's hilarious. Does it mean you would like to feel smug about the Suez using tugs to clear the shipjam behind Ever Given?

I've been seeing a lot of different estimates of how long it would take rerouted shipping traffic to actually reach the Cape, ranging anywhere from days to months (I am really fucking dubious of that one).

I am also dubious of months, but if you get some hard numbers, please let me know. I am genuinely curious.

[edit] I suspect they'll mostly stand by the sunk cost fallacy and keep waiting.

Thank you for the numbers. Now I'm trying to figure out what prices are going to rise on first, if they haven't already.

[edit edit] The re-routing seems to be happening, though:

"Already, seven giant carriers of liquefied natural gas appear to have decided to change course away from the canal, according to Kpler.

"One of these ships, chartered by Royal Dutch Shell, had picked up a cargo of gas at Sabine Pass in Texas and was heading toward the canal when it made a sharp turn in the Atlantic Ocean toward Africa. Another, operated by Qatargas, a state energy company, and loaded at Ras Laffan, the Qatar energy hub, was headed for Suez but then veered away toward the Cape of Good Hope before reaching the Red Sea.

"Container ships are also changing their plans. HMM, a South Korean shipping company, ordered one of its vessels that was headed to Asia from Britain via the canal to go around Africa instead, according to NOH Ji-hwan, a spokesman for the company."

[thedarlingone]

Oh neat! I am very entertained by this whole situation. It's so much less stressful an entry on the bingo card of Things Nobody Expected than last March with the pandemic.