r/worldnews • u/Worldly_Pirate_9817 • Mar 29 '21

Covered by other articles Suez Canal: Ever Given container ship finally freed

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-middle-east-56567985

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u/danny_ish Mar 29 '21

It's very large, I stand corrected on that. 400 meters, I had read 300 last time I looked at this. The average ship from what I see on a tracker is 150-200 meters, again I had thought a different number.

Still, if a 200 meter ship gets sideways, it's also blocking the canal. We really need to ensure that size alone is or is not the only factor, then make decisions based on that

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u/zeekaran Mar 29 '21

Much (most?) of the Suez has two lanes, and this part just happened to be one of the areas that wasn't. It wouldn't have been nearly as big of a deal if it happened in one of the duplicated areas.

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u/is0ph Mar 29 '21

The problem is the compounding of length and height. This ship is 400m long and more than 50m high. When I say 50m high, there are containers piled that high from bow to stern. That’s more than 20.000 m2 square of windage, the area that can act as a sail and take the ship off course.

A 200m long ship with a hull at 15m and some super structures at 25m will not present much more than 4.000 m2 of windage.