Sad; you can tell this guy is really suffering from being violently ejected from the race.
Ignorant question: can radar pick up floating shipping containers or do they tend to be too low in the water?
Anyone ever come across the statistic of collisions with containers? I thought someone a few years back posted a link to a whole website concerning lost containers at sea.
I would guess statistically, most of us over 60 are more likely to be in trouble from medical reasons, plus all the other shipboard emergencies including lightning strikes etc than hitting a container.
According to gcaptain there was an average of 1679 containers/yr lost at sea for the period 2008 through 2014. The number is increasing as more ships ply the oceans.
Unknown is the sink rate and duration afloat. Containers are metal so if afloat a foot or more should show up on radar. Except in a confused sea state maybe. Last big job I was on we moved about 15,000 containers, specified to be all metal for stacking and storage purposes. None were lost at sea but several were with contents trashed when opened.
1679 is the total counting in catastrophic losses(sinkings). Majority of those go down with the ship. 546 annually wash overboard and make up the majority of the floaters. Still pretty small compared to total number shipped, roughly 120 million per year.
http://www.worldshipping.org/indust..._Lost_at_Sea_-_2014_Update_Final_for_Dist.pdf
It cost less to buy the contents of 1,000 containers per year than to spend more time in port securing the load more. Realizing that you can only secure items to a point, they feel they've reached that point.
That's my best guess anyway.
Could someone explain why the logistics and insurance industries tolerate containers washing overboard? Not questioning the ones that go down with the ship but it seems to me containers should be secured better so they won't overboard.
I`m imagining the insurance claim had you hit it.....Back in 2004 I was sailing back home from Bermuda. As dawn was breaking and we were just exiting the Gulf Stream approximately 30 miles ESE of the mouth of the Chesapeake bay we almost hit a house. Yes a house! It was mostly frame wood and a bit of a roof and we were about 20 feet from hitting it. Had we struck it probably would have holed the boat. I have no idea how it got there as we could not recall any recent storms. My best guess that it was a prefab house being shipped by barge and it was washed off. As I recall we didn't see any barnacles so it could not have been in the water too long. I wish we had taken pictures but all of us aboard were so awe struck that none of us thought about photos until we were too far away. At night who knows how many close calls a boat sailing in the ocean might have.
Paul M
Could someone explain why the logistics and insurance industries tolerate containers washing overboard? Not questioning the ones that go down with the ship but it seems to me containers should be secured better so they won't overboard.