#TIDAL RANGE SUEZ CANAL FREE#

“We knew one thing for sure: an exceptionally high tide was expected early the next week,” says global operations manager Thijs van der Jagt, who coordinated the salvage operation on shore in Egypt.”That was going to be our best shot – and perhaps the only serious shot for the time being – to refloat the Ever Given. The salvage team and the support team in the Netherlands soon realize that heavy tugs are needed on the south side, while all the SCA’s equipment is located to the north of the vessel. He manages communications with the SCA, the support team in the Netherlands and the corporate communications team. Gorter and Schothorst are working on a 3D model of the Ever Given to establish a picture of the vessel’s strength, buoyancy and stability. Immediately after arrival, Martina and Smits take stock of the situation on board. The team led by the salvage master Jules Martina consists of senior naval architect Alexander Gorter, naval architect Quinten Schothorst, commercial manager Jody Sheilds and salvage superintendent Peter Smits. The salvage team boards the Ever Given on Thursday, 25 March. The topic is suddenly the talk of the town, and so is the role of Boskalis and its subsidiary SMIT Salvage. The world is beginning to realize that the blockage could have a huge economic impact. Numerous national and international news channels pick up that quote.

#TIDAL RANGE SUEZ CANAL FREE#

When asked how much time the salvage operation will take, he says it could take weeks to free this ‘beached whale’ if containers have to be removed from the vessel. That evening, Boskalis’ CEO Peter Berdowski is interviewed in the Dutch current affairs program Nieuwsuur. The rising demand for news is a snowball that just keeps rolling, getting bigger and bigger all the time. On Wednesday morning, 24 March, the tide of messages continues to rise and it’s not long before the phones in Boskalis’ corporate communications department are ringing nonstop.

Messages on social media indicate that the situation is serious. Vessel-tracking systems and satellite imagery soon make it clear that the Ever Given is completely blocking the canal. As a result of those contacts, Boskalis suggests sending a salvage team to look at the situation on site. In the meantime, Boskalis has got in touch with the Japanese ship owner through its regular Japanese salvage partner, Nippon Salvage, and is asked to think about a technical solution. Usually, it’s a question of pulling hard to refloat the vessel.” But by late afternoon, the Ever Given hadn’t moved an inch. “The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) usually sorts things out itself with its own tugs. “It’s not uncommon for vessels to get grounded in the canal,” says Paul van ’t Hof, operations manager EMEA at Boskalis subsidiary SMIT Salvage. The Ever Given is now completely blocking the canal. The 23 Indian crew members are fortunately unharmed. Its bow and stern get wedged in the sticky rock like clay on either side of the canal. At 7:40 local time, the vessel is unable to maintain its course.

The canal is about 300 meters wide but it is only deep enough in the middle for a vessel as large as the Ever Given, which has a draft of almost 16 meters. It has 18,350 TEU containers on board, most of them ‘forty-footers’. The vessel is on its way from Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It is as tall as a high-rise building and, including the cargo, it weighs more than 240,000 tons. It is 400 meters long, the equivalent of four soccer fields, and almost 59 meters wide. The vessel heads north on its way to the Mediterranean Sea, fifth in a convoy of twenty. On Tuesday, 23 March, one of the world’s largest container vessels sails into the southernmost single-lane section of the nearly 200-kilometer-long Suez Canal. In this article, we look back on this unique salvage operation. The major economic impact meant that the blockage dominated headlines throughout the world, as did the role of Boskalis as the salvage company. Together, they carry approximately 12% of total world trade. Some 18,300 vessels sail through the canal every year.

At a stroke, it completely blocked all the traffic in one of the world’s most important shipping routes. Infrastructure Salvage In the morning of Tuesday, 23 March, the container vessel Ever Given ran aground in the Southern single-lane section of the Suez Canal.

Tidal range suez canal