This exchange of opinions is getting very interesting, let's see what in my opinion I made it very general, so let's see it from another perspective, as I see it as a hull and machinery inspector and damage adjuster for insurers and P&I Clubs apart from my experience in navigation.
First of all Frank and simonwp is that I mean how complicated and slow without mentioning how expensive it is to solve this type of problems and breakdowns, this ship has a total length of 399.98 Mts, that is to say 400.00 Mts., Its beam is 58 , 80 Mts., And its depth is 26.20 Mts., When I spoke about the navigation of Suez and Panama I was referring to that ships of this size if they have any damage, occurrences or accidents in the navigation, the time and cost of the repair or solution of the problem (that is, the direct cost of solving the problem) plus indirect costs such as the total blocking of traffic in both directions, costs of stopping the canal, daily costs of all vessels stopped waiting to resume the trip, delays in delivery of goods, congestion in the ports once traffic has resumed, etc, etc, are extremely high, we would be talking about billions of dollars not a few cents more or less.
Now, let's look at the specific case of the transit of ships through both channels, and in which I accept my mistake was not when they were inaugurated but rather how their transit is:
The Suez Canal runs open-pit, that is, it does not need any type of lock to level its traffic between one point and another, but this does not leave it free from accidents such as the one suffered by the "Ever Gifted", please remember also the other mishaps suffered by other ships with characteristics very similar to this ship, which suffered the fall of several containers into the sea due to bad weather in transit, having to return to port to unload broken containers that were left on deck and re-stowage of ships.
Suppose that during the transit the ship suffers a major breakdown or fire in the Engine Roo m or the Main Engine that does not allow it to continue its normal journey and leaves it stranded in the channel, it is very possible that this varies as a result of drift, current, wind, etc., which would cause this same occurrence.
Now, and this in my modest understanding is a little more complicated is in the transit through the Panama Canal, because in this canal a system of locks is needed to overcome the different levels between the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea (Atlantic Ocean), the original locks. Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun were enough for the passage of let's say conventional ships, and the use of the "mules" allowed the ships to keep centered apart from towing them during the transit through them, but this is not applicable for these now called ULCV That is why the Cocoli and Aguas Claras locks were built, but here it must be mentioned that the traffic of the ships is done with tugboats, those who take the ship and introduce it to the locks remain inside the locks with the ship at a minimum distance, which caused many inconveniences and labor protests by the tugboat crews with the canal administration, due to the occupational risk they were running.
For example, what would happen if one of these vessels suffered a serious breakdown in Lake Miraflores, Culebra Cut or Lake Gatun? It would be another traffic jam of gigantic ships for trade, ships and sidereal sums to solve the problem, for this I cannot explain why, with the first alerts of the type of damage that these ships could suffer, the maximum drafts of navigation for traffic through both channels, the maximum height or maximum number of containers on board, maximum drafts, maximum dimensions of the ships, if this type of ships can navigate expeditiously through the channels, all this to minimize the consequences of any breakdown on board.
All the round trips of these ships are with a load of more than 20,000 containers? I think not, I have seen this type of ships with a minimum amount of containers on board, are these ships safe in bad weather? In practice and not in theory that sometimes they tend to be very different, what should be a maximum height of containers on board for safe navigation and not leave a trail of containers on the bottom of the sea, in short I think this would be enough not to enter into useless musings.
Regards
Tomi.