What is Alex up to?

Kukri said:
Now please tell us how to make a dry box full of expanded polystyrene, an empty tank container or an empty reefer box sink quickly...?
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The last two could probably be done with a hydrostatic valve system. More than a metre's head of water at the base and two valves open to allow water in at the bottom and air out at the top. The first is on the face of it harder - what's the effective overall density of a packed container.

That said, I wonder if they really did hit something or if the keel just fell off. Some of them are built so the keel doesn't fall off at all..
 
Kukri,

how come we see so many photo's of loads of containers falling off ships ?

Certainly something needs to be done, if shipping lines had to pay more to fit collision warning systems of some kind it might concentrate their minds a bit - some seem a great deal more lackadaisical about it than yourself.

I have always thought the ships with what looks like a toast rack to secure the containers must be a good start ?
 
I'm guessing that flags of convenience and management who are focused on the bottom line at the expense of safety, are the problem but, according to GCaptain, close to 1400 containers a year were lost over the last three years. Maybe making such people responsible with significant financial penalties would focus their minds a bit.

OK, so one can't guarantee that any container will sink quickly enough to ensure it doesn't become a risk, but fitting it with a variation on a theme of a PLB would ensure it can be found before someone runs into it. In the event that it sinks, the beacon will stop transmitting and one can simply stop worrying. I'm aware that it's a bit (a lot) more complicated than that, but far more complex issues have been overcome. You don't have to have laws about it in China or any other source port, just at the port of arrival. Incorrectly programmed or non-functioning containers are not allowed to be unloaded. Ship owner's problem. Allowances for the odd one that failed, as they will, but not for a ship-load.
 
Stemar said:
I'm guessing that flags of convenience and management who are focused on the bottom line at the expense of safety, are the problem but, according to GCaptain, close to 1400 containers a year were lost over the last three years. Maybe making such people responsible with significant financial penalties would focus their minds a bit.

OK, so one can't guarantee that any container will sink quickly enough to ensure it doesn't become a risk, but fitting it with a variation on a theme of a PLB would ensure it can be found before someone runs into it. In the event that it sinks, the beacon will stop transmitting and one can simply stop worrying. .
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When you exclude catastrophic losses, where you lose an entire ship, that figure comes down to 500-600 a year. Even if 50% of those are floaters, that's a very small percentage of the 150m-200m containers shipped globally each year.

The ones that do get washed off tend to be in exposed outer stacks on deck. Should a box have a tracker when it is six rows down in the hold? The loading plan will be done by the terminal so you won't know ahead of time which container will be where.

Frankly, it's a lot of money and effort just so Alex can bomb around the Atlantic at 30kts.

There are efforts to bring more container tracking devices on to the market, but these will be introduced for other commercial rationales than losing the odd box to the oggin.
 
Seajet said:
Kukri,

how come we see so many photo's of loads of containers falling off ships ?

Certainly something needs to be done, if shipping lines had to pay more to fit collision warning systems of some kind it might concentrate their minds a bit - some seem a great deal more lackadaisical about it than yourself.

I have always thought the ships with what looks like a toast rack to secure the containers must be a good start ?
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Pictures of collapsed stows are spectacular.

The toast racks that you refer to are cell guides, which are fitted in the holds. You can’t use them above deck because the pontoon hatch covers have to be lifted on and off and since by definition they are longer than the cell guides under them they would foul cell guides on deck. What we have on deck on big ships are lashing bridges which take the lashing rods from the upper tiers in order to keep the weight of the lashing systems down to what can be handled by humans. These are of course clear of the pontoon hatches.

Thirty years ago Nedlloyd experimented with ships with cell guides all the way up, no hatch covers, and extra big bilge pumps. They worked fine but they took longer to work cargo because the crane had to take the spreader all the way up and all the way down for every movement.

I think that if you put 1,400 boxes lost overboard each year in the context of world container movements by sea the number is practically trivial. I think the figure of 1,400 may be low and I have seen higher figures but the higher numbers - up to 10,000 - include the occasional sinkings of ships.

Unfortunately our industry is in the habit of recording our data in terms of twenty foot equivalent units (“TEUs”) and most of the boxes we move are forty footers, so we need to divide the TEU figures by the ratio between 20ft and 40ft boxes, but roughly 146 million TEU moved by sea last year. If we call that 73 million box movements we are understating it by quite a bit.

https://www.joc.com/maritime-news/global-container-growth-forecast-rebound_20190425.html


So, taking both lower figures, 1,400 boxes lost OB and 73 million box movements, we come out with a percentage risk of a box going OB of 0.0002%
 
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I might say I don't much care about how busy ships are and percentages, there are still a lot of containers lurking around to kill yotties and their families or chums !

Containers with heavy cargo could be easily and promptly sunk by large salt tablets top and bottom ( yes how the tablets are protected from spray is the companys' problem, I expect a plastic cover of some kind would do - maybe those likely to float should have some sort of beacon, be it radar reflector, lights on a flip up mast I of course dunno but something has to happen.

And how come people are free to post stuff uninspected around the world by containers ?

Drugs etc aside, I've always thought the first we'll know if terrorists have nukes is when they light one off in the Thames or Southampton.
 
Given the numbers, anyone would be exceedingly unlucky to hit a container given the square miles of shipping routes divided by the area of a floating containers. Although some could turn up anywhere.

I would expect that racing skippers just take the risk along with everything else.

Probably a lot more likely of injury would be a cyclist in the UK hitting a pothole in the dark.
 
I'm not convinced hitting a container is like winning the lottery - lots of ocean sailors seem to be either hitting or sighting the things, hardly surprising when they're sprinkled dozens or hundreds at a time.

Detecting the things ahead is nigh on impossible even with military grade kit, short of a relay of helicopters using active dipping sonar in front - even then it would be very tricky.

If yotties' lives are insignificant maybe it needs a serious profit making ship or a warship to get badly damaged by a container, then there might be a $ incentive to sort out couldn't care less idiots.
 
Kukri said:
Good point. Container ships operate on very well defined routes; they don’t wander across oceans shedding boxes as they go.

As to what the HUGO BOSS hit, a container awash, a log, or a sleeping whale, we may never know, as her keel is at the bottom of the sea.
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Has something else happened then ?

I thought the keel was dangling from the hydraulic ram.

Maybe racing boats such as Hugo Boss should have an underwater camera or three, facing the hull, keel and foils to show anything they do hit, on a loop like CCTV or a Cockpit Voice Recorder.
 
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Fair enough, though it's a shame to lose the evidence of what it hit.

Bob Salmon who raced a boat like mine across and went onto a reef at Antigua also jettisoned his keel, it appears a handy option in extreme situations.

So my tongue in cheek idea of underwater CCTV would be jolly handy right now.
 
I'm guessing it's probably a tad tricky to verify, photograph or take paint scrapings from something very big and heavy still ramming the boat and secure them in a little plastic bag, in big waves while searching for the emergency grab bag and any other survival stuff useful one might get hold of, looking out for family or chums as the boat disappears from under ones' feet, quite possibly on a windy night...:rolleyes:
 
Seajet said:
I'm guessing it's probably a tad tricky to verify, photograph or take paint scrapings from something very big and heavy still ramming the boat and secure them in a little plastic bag, in big waves while searching for the emergency grab bag and any other survival stuff useful one might get hold of, looking out for family or chums as the boat disappears from under ones' feet, quite possibly on a windy night...:rolleyes:
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So it could be anything, then? And "container" is just a guess?
 
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