Egypt's president orders preparations for unloading the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal
Source: Washington Post
Middle East
Egypt’s president orders preparations for unloading the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Jennifer Hassan
March 28, 2021 at 7:38 a.m. EDT
ISMAILIA, Egypt — Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi ordered preparations to be made for the unloading of the Ever Given cargo carrier that is blocking the Suez Canal, the head of the canal authority said Sunday.
Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, told Egyptian television that they were preparing for the "third scenario" of unloading containers from the massive ship so that it can be refloated and open up one of the world's busiest waterways which has been blocked for five days now and left more than 300 ships waiting to pass through.
Unloading some of the 18,000 containers from the towering ship would require special equipment so the president authorized obtaining it even while dredging continued, Rabie said, explaining that 27,000 cubic feet of sand had already been removed from around the vessel to a depth of 18 meters.
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The attempts to pull the vessel out of the sand and mud will be aided by the addition of two larger and heavier tug boats — the Netherlands-registered ALP Guard and the Italy-registered Carlo Magna. Both are scheduled to arrive on Sunday in the canal, said the ship’s technical manager, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement.
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Hassan reported from London. Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.
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Sudarsan Raghavan
Sudarsan Raghavan is The Washington Post’s Cairo bureau chief. has reported from more than 65 nations and territories. He has been posted in Baghdad, Kabul, Johannesburg, Madrid and Nairobi. He has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the 2011 Arab revolutions, as well as reported from 17 African wars. Follow https://twitter.com/raghavanWaPo
Jennifer Hassan
Jennifer Hassan is a London-based breaking-news reporter for the Foreign desk at The Washington Post. Before joining The Post as a social media editor in 2016, Jennifer was global community manager for the international chat app Viber. Jennifer honed her breaking news skills as the U.K. social media editor at MailOnline. Follow https://twitter.com/GuinnessKebab
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/suez-ship-canal-ever-given-stuck/2021/03/28/4bda3ee8-8f2c-11eb-a33e-da28941cb9ac_story.html
GuinnessKebab? What a great handle.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Is this the first time the president of Egypt has made public comment? A week later? 
are often trailers that eventually get hitched to truck cabs and off they go on their way (as 18-wheelers)... I have seen them unload the barges at the piers along the Delaware river here and at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario... and it's pretty fascinating. I don't think the weight is the issue with a crane like that. Last summer it lifted an 8,100 ton piece for a platform -
The typical 40ft container can hold up to around 62 tons.
I think the issue here is to get a crane that can extend up high enough to grab the topmost containers...
and should be about complete, getting the entirety from the Delaware Bay on up (to the cargo piers further north) at least 45 ft - https://www.philaport.com/channel-deepening/
https://www.philaport.com/delaware-river-deepening-30-years-and-16-million-cubic-later/
And yes, one of our issues here too are the bridges (Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin) and getting some of the tallest ships (including large cruise ships) under those bridges to some of the piers upriver like Tioga Marine Terminal -
There are some terminals before the Walt Whitman bridge (which is the furthest south one) -
and I have watched the barges go up and down the river to the refrigerated terminals (could see them from my office at work) - watching them go up "full" and come back "empty"... and yes, they are sitting "higher" in the water when empty! 
Way up further in NE Philly for any ships going up that far, they do have to deal with a drawbridge - what we used to call the "double nickel bridge" (Tacony-Palmyra), which used to have a 10 cent toll back in the day. Now it is $4 like the rest of the bridge. 
You can see why the need for a drawbridge there - "low ceiling" 
(I think that ship was empty so it is "sitting high" )
Anchored on the banks. On both sides of the stern.
Port side of the bow, slightly elevated to put pull and
lift on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the winches are
stronger than the tugs...
The port side pulls
the bow up and off the furrow it made. The stern side
winches keep the back from swinging into that canal bank..
