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Sister-ship to the Suez Canal blocker aground in the Chesapeake


MickinMD

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This ship ran aground near the dog beach I posted about this week.  Ships like this are supposed to have a Baltimore Pilot aboard, but I don't know how far outside of the Port of Baltimore it's required - this is over 10 miles to the south after it departed Baltimore.  It's the Ever Forward and its sister-ship, the Ever Given, is the one that ran aground and blocked the Suez Canal for days last year.

The Chesapeake Bay is relatively shallow in most places despite being miles wide - mostly less than 35 feet deep (which is why we have so many crabs!), so there is a deep ship's channel dredged into the Bay's bottom nearest the side of the Bay closest to the dog beach so huge ships can get to the Port of Baltimore and unload or load their cargoes far inland from the Atlantic Coast, resulting in lower overland shipping costs.

The channel is a great place to go trolling for Striped Bass during turbulent weather - those Rockfish like it a little deeper than normal so a trolling line rigged to keep the lure at about 15 feet often works like a charm.  Apparently, the Ever Forward is not in that channel because it's said it's not blocking shipping.

The container ship Ever Forward, which ran aground in the Chesapeake Bay off the coast near Pasadena, Md., the night before, is seen Monday, March 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

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9 hours ago, jdc2000 said:

The shipping company that owns those vessels needs some better boat drivers and some GPS.

Wasn't it the pilot's fault in the Suez, and maybe - Mick wasn't sure if the pilot was on board yet - in this case too?

But man, they are going to have a headline for every mishap they have over the next several years.

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25 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Wasn't it the pilot's fault in the Suez, and maybe - Mick wasn't sure if the pilot was on board yet - in this case too?

But man, they are going to have a headline for every mishap they have over the next several years.

The ship blamed it on a dust storm over the Suez Canal but that doesn't seem right: that wouldn't mess up its compass and depth finders.

Back in cheap gasoline days, we had a 21' long pleasure/fishing boat and my brother and I actually took an 8 hour college class in "How to Catch Rockfish (Striped Bass)".  We took about 9 pages each of notes of how to rig lures, boat speeds, best locations, how to maneuver around buoys, and HOW DEEP THE BAY IS AT VARIOUS POINTS.  In most places in the upper half of the Bay near Annapolis or Baltimore is 35' or less deep - a lot less in many places.

The fact this ship is NOT in the shipping channel says something about how careless the steering was.

Ships with a deep draft hug the shipping channel that was dredged out between Baltimore and the deeper water in the lower Bay and is re-dredged every decade or so.  Fishermen trolling for Rockfish like to head N-S along the channel or zig-zag E-W and W-E across it.  With fishing lines running up to about 150' behind your boat, you have to keep an eye out for a big freighter coming along the channel and that's not hard to do.  There is room for big ships to pass each other, so this ship had no excuses.

I had a summer job after the 1st year of college in the Yard Superintendent's office at the Baltimore Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in 1969 and sometimes had to call a tugboat company to get pilots and tugboats to guide ships into the shipyard, which was just a little outside of Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

I don't know how far outside the harbor the tugs and pilot met the ship or where they left the ships when they departed, but I got the notifications from the incoming ships when they were south of Annapolis (Baltimore is north of Annapolis). I would think the bigger ships of today would require at least as serious rules as then.  This ship is stranded about 1/2 way between Baltimore and Annapolis.

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1 minute ago, Page Turner said:

...if I had a nickel for every minute I've spent stuck on a shallow water sandbar in the Chesapeake Bay, I could buy that container ship and turn it into condo's.

That just might happen.  Affordable housing below deck and high priced stuff in the upper containers. 

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