Reuters: Floating the rogue ship in the Suez Canal

Inchcape Shipping Services said the defaulting container ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal for about a week has been brought back afloat on Monday and is currently being insured, raising expectations that the vital waterway will open soon.

Inchcape Marine Services said in a tweet on Twitter that the ship’s floatation operations were successful at 4:30 am local time and that it is currently being secured.

Ship tracking service Wessel Finder changed the ship’s position on its website to “operational” and the service site displayed the ship’s response to pulling maneuvers.

For the first time since its delinquency last Tuesday, the site showed that the ship was in a vertical position on the sailing course, which augurs the success of the pulling maneuvers in which 10 locomotives participated.

Lieutenant General Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority, announced early Monday morning the start of towing maneuvers to float the criminal Panamanian container ship by 10 giant tugs operating from four different directions.

The head of the authority explained that the distribution of the locomotives during tension maneuvers includes pulling the bow of the ship towards the north by means of both the “Baraka” and the “Izzat Adel” locomotive with a force of 160 tons each.

While 4 tugs push the stern of the ship to the south, the two new tugs include “Abdel Hamid Youssef” and “Mustafa Mahmoud” with a tension of 70 tons each, and the two tugs Port Said 1 and Port Said 2.

Two locomotives are also working to tension the ship’s stern to the south, led by the Dutch APL GUARD with a pulling force of 285 tonnes, and the Maradev locomotive.

It is reported that the Dutch locomotive APL GUARD arrived on Sunday evening, as part of the Dutch SMIT team, to participate in the efforts to float the rogue Panamanian container ship.

Photos of the ship “Ever Given” stranded in the Suez Canal after floating