Ever Forward Versus Ever Given: Grounding and Salvage | What’s Going on With Shipping?
Salvors have been appointed (doesn’t say which):
What was the state of tide at the time of grounding?
The “Muddy bottom” may result in strong “suction” over a large area of her flat bottom.
In a similar situation with a grounded drillship off Changi Point in Singapore, we ended up having to bring in a “jet dredger” to blow away mud to break the suction.
PS> A “mud plug” in the moonpool didn’t help. (At least they don’t have that problem)
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A spokesperson for the Coast Guard said Donjon-SMIT is the appointed salvage company in the operation.
Actually, there was a slight change in bearing at the end; if you set a ruler on the green points, the last two (yellow and red) appear to be a degree or two to the right of the line… I’m not sure how literally I can take that image, though…
There are no dumb questions. It is a very good question and ships have high and low intakes for that purpose. So they use the high cooling water intakes in the rivers , shallow waters and/or similar environment. Soft and sticky mud may turn the refloating efforts into a nightmare. Cheers
tidal range is only 1 foot ,so high tide will not help much and mentioned jet dredgers may be the only option.
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Beauty she is but hogging beauty on this pic , unless my eyes are lying. Curious to see her bending moment loadicator printout . Salvatore_Mercoglian has released his second 42 min clip with nice AIS presentations. have just finished watching.
Eh… that change is probably due to the grounding itself. At that draft, they were touching bottom as soon as the bow left the channel.
The position and heading at buoy 16 is what’s most interesting to me. Either they lost steering (or the command wasn’t carried out properly), or someone (the pilot) really lost track of where the ship was.
Hopefully, an initial report is released soon.
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This sort of reminds me of APL Panama, in 2006… ran aground on a sandy beach in Mexico… they had to build a special loading dock on the beach to remove (all?? many?? don’t exactly recall) her containers, then basically remove the beach, to get her out of there… it only took 3 or 4 months, but it was quite the mess, at least for that era… and she was only about 4,000 teu…
From memory she arrived at the Ensenada Pilot boarding ground at about 1700 Christmas Day. The mate had lunched well and with nobody else around had settled in the pilot chair for a wee nap. The only reason the pilot launch didn’t become a casualty was they are usually late as the ship blew by . The entry to the harbour requires a turn to port in front of the beach. I arrived the next day.
Anyway, nobody got hurt and the ship is only delayed. I think the fairway was badly dredged by US authorities.
That HAS to be it! I mean it isn’t like a busy port with ships going back and forth every day and it isn’t like the ship is OUT OF THE CHANNEL 
Yeah, the Corps of Engineers must have forgotten to dredge an over-run zone or include a runaway ship lane.
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Strange! Standard routines on any ship when grounding, are of course, to sound all tanks and inspect all hull spaces below waterline without any Coast Guard ordering anything. Maybe the local pilot was drunk? And when aground, draft, trim, position and speed will hardly change. Also check the depth at the bow by a sounding. If your draft is 45 feet and the depth at the bow is 40 feet, you are aground.
The Maryland pilots use PPUs. Made a trip southbound one time and the unit would chime before each turn. But a little late because each time the pilot had already started the turn. Pilot said he kept the chime on just in case. So some kind of distraction was considered by the pilot to be within the realm of possibilities.
In the case of a steering failure I’d expect the heading would likely slowly change, especially when getting close to that bank.
One possibility is the steering stand inadvertently set on auto without the helmsman being aware.
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I put a huge magnet east of the channel last time I was out there. Don’t tell anyone 
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Your comedy routine is gold, Jerry. GOLD!
They should have slowed down and let the ship slowly drift into the bank.
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Station select issue, perhaps?