A question. Are these cargo ships like airplanes in their control guidance systems? A pre planned course for XYZ port and basically those on the bridge are there to monitor and handle certain tasks?
Is there a possibility that the system could have been hacked?
Some of y'all know this shit. I am just throwing it out there.
It’s my understanding and that any transit that requires a pilot on board like this canal or a lock you can’t run any autopilot system and the ship has to be manually controlled. I’m pretty sure that’s just standard across the board in all countries too.
This particular ship also apparently had two pilots on board, not uncommon at all on all the large ships during difficult transits. The captain is also still the master of the ship and can override the pilots command if they believe they’re making a bad call but that’s frowned upon. You also have to consider the power trip factor where this person gets to be temporarily in charge for a period of time. The one time I’ve been aboard a large vessel during a crossing with a pilot I witnessed that first hand.
There was a bad wind storm coming from the worst possible direction and the weather data and also the GPS data all support it was blowing the ship all around. The tall flat sides of the containers just make it a huge sail and when Mother Nature decides you’re going to go X direction, sometimes there’s not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it, especially at low speed. They were hovering right along that right shallow side of the canal and once it turned a little and dug into the sand there was no steering it back with the rudder, thrusters, or anything. Also no stopping that big bitch until she stops.
A lot of people have been talking about system issues because of the holding pattern on the GPS data before they entered the canal. That’s not abnormal at all. A ship can sit for days waiting at a crossing and they’re normally anchored. When it’s anchored it blows all around if/when the wind changes directions. But say you have a 1/4 mile long boat and the GPS beacon is at the rear (usually is on container ships) and the anchors are at the front (always is) you’d make a 1/2 mile diameter circle when the wind blows you around assuming the anchor is straight down which isn’t possible. If the water is 200’ deep then they may have as much as 1400’ of anchor out so factoring in depth and line angle that’s another 1000’ ish behind the anchor point. So now your 1/2 mile diameter circle is almost doubled. If the water is deeper (probably is) you have even more line out.
The holding pattern really isn’t strange. They may also have the raise the anchor and reposition due to another anchored ship blowing their direction. When they finally get underway again they also may not be able to make a straight line to the inlet due to other vessels in the way, obstructions under water, needing to get properly positioned in the convoy, or just they were pointing the wrong direction and had to make a loop to get their heading. I’d put my money on the latter being the case since it looks like they turned into the wind to loop around.
With that said, that should have been a clue to wait out the storm. Bottom line is that both the captain and pilots made some bad fucking calls. The question is what led to those bad calls. Inexperienced pilots? Pressure on the captain to deliver the cargo by a deadline? They should have waited out the storm to cross. At the end of the day it doesn’t seem like anyone was hurt, it just delayed some chicom junk getting to Europe and some oil getting to a war torn country that should probably get cut off anyway. That’s all they’ve been bitching about anyway.
I’ve rather enjoyed the entertainment from it since I’m a nerd and like this kind of stuff.