Ever Given again? No, Ever Forward not going forward

[Bajansailor]

Evergreen have now declared General Average - the cargo owners are not going to be very happy about this.
General Average Declared for Ever Forward After Unsuccesful Attempts to Refloat the Ship

 

[Stemar]

Evergreen have now declared General Average - the cargo owners are not going to be very happy about this.
General Average Declared for Ever Forward After Unsuccesful Attempts to Refloat the Ship

Pure speculation, but I could easily imagine the cost per container exceeding the value of a load of fast fashion tee shirts. Can the shippers just say, "Sod it", and walk away?

Then there's the delightful details of who is actually responsible for paying - FOB, which presumably means the importer, or CIF, which presumably means the shipper - or does the I bit mean it's the insurer who pays?

 

[Kukri]

Pure speculation, but I could easily imagine the cost per container exceeding the value of a load of fast fashion tee shirts. Can the shippers just say, "Sod it", and walk away?

Then there's the delightful details of who is actually responsible for paying - FOB, which presumably means the importer, or CIF, which presumably means the shipper - or does the I bit mean it's the insurer who pays?

It’s the cargo insurers.

This will be followed by the ritual square dance in which the cargo insurers refuse to pay their share of GA alleging that the cause of the mishap that led to the salvage was the unseaworthiness of the ship. The cargo insurers refuse to give GA security to the Adjusters unless they get counter security from the ship.

At this point the ship’s P&I Club give counter security to the cargo insurers in return for the cargo underwriters giving GA security after which the receivers get their slightly delayed cargo.

If you reflect on how many Bills of Lading there are for a modern container ship of this size, you can see how much paperwork is involved here.

 

[newtothis]

I don’t think I can add much to what Newtothis has posted.

Belated update from me is that after the first two attempts failed, the next one will be on Sunday to correspond with high tide, after further dredging. After that, they're heading to neaps, with the next spring high tide not until 19/4. I think they're going to need to get more tugs involved, tho. When similar big ships went aground in the Scheldt and Elbe a few years back, it took 12-16 tugs to haul them off, and they had the advantage of bigger tidal ranges than Chesapeake Bay.

 

[Kukri]

A note on trying to take cargo off a grounded boxboat:

Port container cranes use automatic spreaders.

The cycle time for a good port container crane with skilled operation and good arrangements on the dock can be up to 36 container moves per hour; for British and American ports the figures are about half that.

If you cannot use automatic spreaders the rate drops right off; the rate of discharge of containers from the container ship ONE APUS (same size as EVER FORWARD) after she suffered a stow collapse was 963 containers in two months, and that was at a Japanese port known for the excellence of its stevedoring.

To get boxes off a grounded ship a floating crane or sheerlegs will be needed. These are built to handle heavy weights and awkward shapes slowly; a cycle time of three container moves per hour would be good. A ship of this size might have five port cranes working on her; it would be difficult to get that many floating cranes in one place.

Helicopters can lift empty containers at fairly vast cost but they don’t have the ability to lift heavy laden containers.

Excellent article in the trade press here:

https://theloadstar.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Loadstar-LongRead-Port-productivity1.pdf

 

[Bajansailor]

A note on trying to take cargo off a grounded boxboat:

1. Port container cranes use automatic spreaders.

I give up. Impossible to type a post

And the gist of what Kukri is saying is that it is incredibly difficult to do this, and no doubt fairly labour and equipment intensive and dangerous to the personnel to boot.
A floating crane would have to be brought in, and every container would have to be regarded like a one off heavy lift, with stevedores manually attaching lifting wires to the 4 corners of the container, as I doubt that spreader bars could be used.

 

[Kukri]

 

[Kukri]

This is traditional midstream container handling at buoys in Hong Kong harbour. The derrick barges can operate on ships of up to 3,500 TEU and each barge can take fifty containers:

 

[Kukri]

As may be seen, this works on smaller container ships and it depends on skilled (and fit!) stevedores.

 

[newtothis]

View attachment 132593View attachment 132594

At least Ever Grounded won't require anglepoise cranes to get the boxes off.

 

[mjcoon]

View attachment 132593View attachment 132594

Perhaps containers should be stacked in patterns like a brickie's "bonds"?

 

[LONG_KEELER]

A note on trying to take cargo off a grounded boxboat:

Port container cranes use automatic spreaders.

The cycle time for a good port container crane with skilled operation and good arrangements on the dock can be up to 36 container moves per hour; for British and American ports the figures are about half that.

If you cannot use automatic spreaders the rate drops right off; the rate of discharge of containers from the container ship ONE APUS (same size as EVER FORWARD) after she suffered a stow collapse was 963 containers in two months, and that was at a Japanese port known for the excellence of its stevedoring.

To get boxes off a grounded ship a floating crane or sheerlegs will be needed. These are built to handle heavy weights and awkward shapes slowly; a cycle time of three container moves per hour would be good. A ship of this size might have five port cranes working on her; it would be difficult to get that many floating cranes in one place.

Helicopters can lift empty containers at fairly vast cost but they don’t have the ability to lift heavy laden containers.

Excellent article in the trade press here:

https://theloadstar.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Loadstar-LongRead-Port-productivity1.pdf

Thanks for that. Looks like taking boxes off is not an option. At least for the moment.

Seeing that there are lots of dredgers about I wonder if they could dredge back to the channel. Say a boat length each time then pull the ship into it and work their way along. Fortunately it seems the bottom is fairly soft.

 

[newtothis]

Thanks for that. Looks like taking boxes off is not an option. At least for the moment.

Seeing that there are lots of dredgers about I wonder if they could dredge back to the channel. Say a boat length each time then pull the ship into it and work their way along. Fortunately it seems the bottom is fairly soft.

Looking at its draft, the water depth and the amount hull showing below the boot top, it has ploughed its way through the mud, so the depth behind it is not so much the problem. Instead its that mud that is surrounding it, which is why they have been dredging along side it.

 

[NormanS]

Salvors were able to remove containers from the MV Rena, when she was perched on the Astrolabe Reef, Bay of Plenty NZ. That was in open water offshore. If they could do it there, surely it should be possible on a non heeling ship in relatively calm waters of Chesapeake Bay.

 

[newtothis]

Salvors were able to remove containers from the MV Rena, when she was perched on the Astrolabe Reef, Bay of Plenty NZ. That was in open water offshore. If they could do it there, surely it should be possible on a non heeling ship in relatively calm waters of Chesapeake Bay.

Anything can be done in a salvage situation; just look at Costa Concordia. But Rena was breaking up and NZ wanted the boxes removed as part of the salvage. And wasn't paying for it. The cost/benefit of removing boxes from Ever Forward is not worth it yet, for all the reasons @Kukri elaborated.

 

[Kukri]

The mud under the hull will have been compressed into something more solid than the mud elsewhere, and the ship is pushing down on it by

(tpc x how much she is out of her draft)= tons.

The trick is to get that compressed mud out from under the ship; she will then float and can be hauled through the soft mud.

 

[Kukri]

There was a question about Evergreen’s crew training:

In the 1980s we used to call the ship that this is a model of, “the most frightening sight in shipping”!

The “Ever Trust”:



She was built in 1972 as a regular container ship.

In 1984 YF Chang rebuilt her to take 400 containers and 200 cadets and their instructors.

Committed to the business… or what!

 

[Kukri]

In the 1980s we used to call this “the most frightening sight in shipping”!

 

[newtothis]

There was a question about Evergreen’s crew training:

In the 1980s we used to call the ship that this is a model of, “the most frightening sight in shipping”!

The “Ever Trust”:

View attachment 132647

She was built in 1972 as a regular container ship.

In 1984 YF Chang rebuilt her to take 400 containers and 200 cadets and their instructors.

Committed to the business… or what!

I'm pretty sure the most frightening sight in shipping now is a Liberia-flagged, 25-year-old bulker with a bridge team of Russians and Ukrainians and a deck crew of Filipinos with certificates of dubious value.
In Capt Chang's day Evergreen was a tightly run ship. At one stage it was the biggest boxship operator, but he was slow to the pass (with some merit) in moving to larger vessels. The next generation has not been as successful.
I can't imagine that sort of commitment to training from any operator these days.

 

[Stemar]

I'm pretty sure the most frightening sight in shipping now is a Liberia-flagged, 25-year-old bulker with a bridge team of Russians and Ukrainians and a deck crew of Filipinos with certificates of dubious value.

This vessel is why I'm always leery of standing on too enthusiastically, no matter what the colregs say. It's also why I've fitted AIS. Not long after I started sailing, I read a MAIB report of a similar boat. The officer of the watch was alone on the bridge with a bottle of whisky to keep him company. After a while he got bored, so he turned off the bridge alarm and went to his cabin to cuddle the bottle. The first anyone else knew was when she steamed up Dungeness beach.