Who has run into a floating container

[jimisbell]

Reading the post about the USCG using them for target practice I wondered if anyone ever ships explosives in them??

[Jim Cate]

So many anecdotes about "hitting a container", so very few where the suspect container was actually seen and identified. Leaves me less than convinced, all told.

Jim

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by billdomb

Why not create some legislation that requires all containers to auto-SINK themselves if exposed to water at pressure for some length of time? Just some vents that can pop open and flood.



SOUNDS easy enough to create, I'd think.

I’ve loaded several containers with aircraft for shipping, mostly “high cube” ones.
None were even close to air tight, but fill one with tennis shoes, or even consumer electronics with all the styrofoam packaging and I bet you couldn’t sink it.
WWII I believe the Brits had what they called “Q” ships, armed freighters that were often filled with balsa wood and I had read even ping pong balls, in other words no matter how many holes you knocked into it, it wouldn’t sink.
They suckered U-boats in close, usually after they were torpedoed of course and the U-boat would surface to sink them with their deck gun, and they would sink the U-boat.
Pretty ballsy crew.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship

[wsmurdoch]

The ship that sunk in a hurricane off Rum Cay in 2015 with 391 containers aboard was the El Faro. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_El_Faro

Many containers float. Refrigerated containers have foam insulation and are buoyant. Tank containers are necessarily sealed. Many containers are filled with goods that are buoyant; foam packaging, bags of potato chips, LPG cylinders, inflatable dunnage bags...

Here are two pictures from my wife's blog.


This is a good size piece of a refrigerated container on the beach at Conception Island taken in 2018. There was more like it nearby.


This is another refrigerated container. It is just inland from the beach on Great Guana Cay. The picture was taken in 2012, but we first saw it a year or two earlier. The week before, a sailboat hit something in the water and sunk 4 miles offshore leaving the two people on board in their dinghy. They don’t know what they hit, but it may have been a shipping container like this one.

Bill

[Tedberry]

My wife and I hit something we assumed was a container one dark and stormy night just south of La Paz, Mexico. Our SOG was less than 2 knots motoring against the wind. We were below monitoring instruments. It made a 2 inch deep, right angled hole in the bow about 1" below the water line. No leak of course, that part of the boat must be at least a foot thick. I did not fix it till we got to Bundaberg in Australia later that year. Also, we reported a floating container to the habor authority in Ensenada, Mexico that same year. It was just outside the harbor wall. We have hit logs in Canada and a tiny iceberg in Alaska. We were drifting slowly with bare poles under a light breeze and the iceberg stopped us dead. No damage though.

[carlwk3c]

Originally Posted by fahtcha

This seems like something that would make a good movie.

Actually, the movie was SO f’ing stupid I couldn’t get past the first 20 minutes or so.

[MartinR]

I calculated the risk for an individual boat to run into a container. Assumptions are that 900 containers are floating at any time, and that the average size to hit is 20' (6m).

It would take on average 700 years of nonstop sailing at 6 knots to run into one, or about 37 million Nautical miles sailed.

If the average cruising boat sails about 5000NM/year, about one boat out of 7400 would hit a container every year, assuming no lookout is kept.

I can definitely live with that.

In reality the risk is of course much lower, because the 900 figure is obviously high.

That said, I can promise, the risk to hit a whale or a log is very much higher. I have seen plenty of these during all my life at sea, never a container.

[mclp]

Originally Posted by freshalaska

Steel shipping containers usually 40 feet sometimes come loose and fall overboard at sea. Who do you know or heard of that has ever hit run into one with their boat? Seems to me the perceived risk is ever blown or maybe it is not.
I know numerous boats that have hit whales including my own last year, but how about who has hit a shipping container and what kind of damage did incure?
Just wondering.

We saw and walked up to a container that had floated into the San Blas Islands. A fellow cruiser lent a bolt cutter to one of the curious Kunas. When it was open they found it was full of styrofoam and empty.

[GordMay]

Greetings and belated welcome aboard the CF, mclp.

[Jerseysailor]

Apparently it is cheaper to ship the containers stacked on deck rather than in the hold. This can lead to ships being top-hamper heavy and losing or having to shed containers.

[MartinR]

Originally Posted by Jerseysailor

Apparently it is cheaper to ship the containers stacked on deck rather than in the hold. This can lead to ships being top-hamper heavy and losing or having to shed containers.

No, the stability is carefully calculated before loading and container ships are not top-heavy. Actually, the ship benefits from a low GM to minimise rolling. So the risk of loosing containers decreases with less stability, counter-intuitive, but that is how it is.

Also, when you see high stacks, normally the containers in the upper layer are empty.

Yes, it is cheaper to ship on deck than in the hold, but that has to do with weather proofing. Also, dangerous goods containers are normally not allowed in the holds. Most of the modern big container ships actually have no holds anymore.

Also, as pointed out before it is not possible to dump containers.

Loss of containers can basically be attributed to two reasons. One - the ship sinking or grounding and breaking up. Two - the containers are not secured properly or the rolling is so violent that the lashings break, which for example can happen if the ship suffers a propulsion failure in heavy weather and ends up beam to the sea.

Most of the losses are because of the first of these cases. In this case, there will be a notice to mariners, and the area can be avoided.

[dirkdig]

A guy from our club hit one 200 nm south of kangaroo island ,flipped his cat, heli rescue , cat washed up 6 months later with the paint marks on the hull off the container, maiden voyage too

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...d7731621fccba9

[MartinR]

Originally Posted by dirkdig

A guy from our club hit one 200 nm south of kangaroo island ,flipped his cat, heli rescue , cat washed up 6 months later with the paint marks on the hull off the container, maiden voyage too

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...d7731621fccba9

If you read this, no container was seen. The skipper only surmised it was a container strike, because they hit something and there was some paint marks. Could have been anything, really.

[GordMay]

There is no requirement on shipping lines to report container losses to the International Maritime Organization, or other international body, so no one seems to know exactly how many containers are lost at sea every year. There is also no requirement for shipping lines to sink, track or retrieve containers lost offshore.
Based on surveys of its members*, of the nine year period (2008-2016), the World Shipping Council (WSC) estimates that there were on average 568 containers lost at sea each year, not counting catastrophic events, and on average a total of 1,582 containers lost at sea each year including catastrophic events. On average, 64% of containers lost during the last decade were attributed to a catastrophic event. The data consistently demonstrates that container losses in any particular year can vary quite substantially based on differences in weather and other unusual events. The data also consistently shows that the majority of containers lost at sea result from catastrophic events.

* The data is several years old, and based on voluntary responses. Other estimates have ranged from 6,000, to as high as 10,000 lost containers per year (Siera Club).

The WSC seeks to reduce those numbers by instituting safety practices, such as verifying container weights, pre-loading, adopting a code of practice for safely packing cargo on ships, and requiring standards for container lashing equipment and corner castings.

➥ http://www.worldshipping.org/industr...AL_July_10.pdf

[MartinR]

These figures are probably close to correct. Almost all parties involved in container shipping are members of the WSC.