Fixing the clog

THE CLOG has been cleared. And we’re not talking about our sinuses (darn pollen). That big container ship in Egypt everyone has been talking about for about a week is now free.

For those who haven’t seen all the images, the ship got stuck in the Suez Canal for six days. Here’s more from the Associated Press:

“Salvage teams on Monday set free a colossal container ship that has halted global trade through the Suez Canal, a canal services firm said, bringing an end to a crisis that for nearly a week clogged one of the world’s most vital maritime arteries. Helped by the peak of high tide, a flotilla of tugboats managed to wrench the bulbous bow of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given from the canal’s sandy bank, where it had been firmly lodged since last Tuesday.”

Sometimes you forget how big a ship can be. Can you imagine something the size of the Simmons Tower in Little Rock getting lodged somewhere? You might wonder why more things that size don’t get stuck more often.

The millions of dollars in delays caused by that blockage seem unreal.

“The stranded mega-container vessel, Ever Given in the Suez Canal, is holding up an estimated $400 million an hour in trade, based on the approximate value of goods that are moved through the Suez every day, according to shipping data and news company Lloyd’s List. Lloyd’s values the canal’s westbound traffic at roughly $5.1 billion a day, and eastbound traffic at around $4.5 billion a day,” CNBC reports.

When you stand to lose that much money every hour, it’s no wonder folks were in such a rush to fix the problem. Have you seen maps of all the ships waiting to get through the canal? They’ve got more dots on the screen than a game of Battleship.

Now it’s just a matter of pushing enough toothpaste through the tube to get things back on track.

In other news, the Internet will have to find another topic to make memes about. Doubtless it will.