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

[legionseagle]

It adds approx two weeks extra onto a journey to go via the Cape of Good Hope as opposed to Suez (everyone had to do it during the eight years Suez was blocked as a result of the aftermath of the 6 Day War, which gave rise to a shedload of lawsuits) but the key point about the divert/not divert choice is that boats go through Suez in convoy and they alternate north bound/south bound and it takes a good while to get a slot, so if you're starting now from say Rotterdam you have to factor in how many people are ahead of you waiting for their slot, too.

Also, it makes a real difference whether you are on a time charter or a voyage charterparty, because of how delays will get calculated in terms of your hire costs for the boat.

[sovay]

Also, it makes a real difference whether you are on a time charter or a voyage charterparty, because of how delays will get calculated in terms of your hire costs for the boat.

I would like you and thedarlingone to know how unironically happy it makes me that I post a tweet because it entertained me on an otherwise exhausting day and people turn up in my comments with logistics.

(I appreciate also the reminder of the Six-Day War and would say something about the silver lining here being an absence of the need for mine sweeping, but I don't want to jinx it.)

[legionseagle]

I did a special subject on International Trade (Law) in my degree in 1983, and the repercussions of the Six-Day War and its impact on the Suez Canal were still making their ways through the law-courts.

[sovay]

I did a special subject on International Trade (Law) in my degree in 1983, and the repercussions of the Six-Day War and its impact on the Suez Canal were still making their ways through the law-courts.

So what are you expecting from this obstruction?

[legionseagle]

Very large top up payments to their pension plans from lawyers engaged in the shipping industry. It's going to run like The Mousetrap.

The first and most important issue is going to be establishing how the skipper came to fall down the companionway boat ended up in both banks simultaneously in the first place. There's a wonderful article Sailors talk about hydrodynamics the way CEOs talk about macroeconomics: they either treat it with mystical reverence, or they claim to understand it and are wrong. delving into the physics of it.

Then there's going to be all sorts of fallouts between the owners, the charterers and the insurers. Oh, and the salvage issue, of course.

And that's before everyone else sticks their three pennorth in.



(Incidentally, the attached post I did a couple of weeks ago manages to combine kdrama and shipping law, and it has some background on shipping rates.)

[movingfinger]

Is there any chance that "some ships are too big for the Suez" is going to be fallout from this?

[sovay]

Is there any chance that "some ships are too big for the Suez" is going to be fallout from this?

There is a designation for that, although it doesn't appear to apply to container ships. That said, it looks as though Ever Given exceeded a couple of its parameters and I'm sure people who know more about naval architecture than me have already taken up this point. [edit] Yep.

[asakiyume]

I love that sovay's friends know things like this--it's wonderful.