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Six Ships Near Iran in the Gulf of Oman Lose Control of Their Steering

Gulf-of-Oman Possible Hijack-990ebcb5

Six Ships Near Iran in the Gulf of Oman Lose Control of Their Steering – Another British Ship May Have Been Hijacked (thegatewaypundit.com)

 

What’s going on in the Gulf of Oman?

Reports out of Israel indicate that at least six ships have lost control and another British ship might be have been hijacked in or near the Gulf of Oman.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — At least six ships off the coast of the United Arab Emirates broadcast warnings Tuesday that they had lost control of their steering under unclear circumstances as British authorities reported “a potential hijack” was underway in the area.

It wasn’t immediately clear what was happening off the coast of Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman.

According to the Reuters news agency, which quoted two security maritime sources, Iranian-backed forces were believed to have seized one of the tankers.

Shipping authority Lloyd’s List and maritime intelligence firm Dryad Global both identified the vessel involved as Panama-flagged asphalt tanker Asphalt Princess. The vessel’s owner, listed as Emirati free zone-based Glory International, could not immediately be reached for comment late Tuesday.

The six vessels announced around the same time via their Automatic Identification System trackers that they were “not under command,” according to MarineTraffic.com. That typically means a vessel has lost power and can no longer steer.

What is going on and is Iran involved?  And to think the corrupt Biden/Obama regime want to cut another insane deal with Iran at this time as well?

7 replies on “Six Ships Near Iran in the Gulf of Oman Lose Control of Their Steering”

Very strange … We won’t know any more until someone actually gets to those ships and checks them out. “Loss of steering” can mean anything from a busted rudder hydraulic system to loss of power. A ship has to have propulsive power, it has to actually be moving through the water, aka “underway”, for sufficient water flow past the rudder to allow the ship to be steered in any given direction.

It is a nightmare of every sailor to be adrift with no steerage, no means to guide their vessel. A really big vessel compounds that fear and it is justified. Something as big as the Asphalt Princess is a danger to herself and all around her if she’s not actively and positively being controlled by her helm and engines.

I do not believe Iran’s “vehement denials” and I doubt anyone of consequence in the West believes it either. That may not make any difference to Creepy Uncle Joe and Co. Iran says it didn’t do it to establish plausible deniability. It’s not very plausible but I wouldn’t put it past the people running Joe to accept that denial anyway.

I didn’t know so I looked it up. It was a navigational/piloting error.

There were high winds (Kamasheen winds out of the Sahara, a local phenomena like the Santa Ana winds in California) blowing down the Suez and the vessel intentionally exceeded max speed to counter the effect of those winds. That was at the instruction of the two Egyptian pilots who came on board to guide the ship through the canal.

A very large ship like that pushes a truly amazing amount of water in front of it. On the open ocean that’s not a problem, in a very narrow canal it can be a big deal.

In a narrow canal the result is a “hill” of water pushed in front of the ship that the ship has to constantly climb. That’s still not a big deal if the ship remains centered between the banks of the canal because the force is equal on both sides of the bow. The ship did not remain centered due to maneuvering intended to counteract the wind.

It got too close to a bank. That puts the “hill” of water all on one side of the bow and rolling down the bank ahead of the bow. It also pushes the bow even further towards the bank. Very quickly

Worse yet, that “hill” has a corresponding valley behind it and alongside the ship. That “valley” then stood between the ship and the bank. There isn’t enough water in that valley to allow the propeller and rudder to function correctly and the ship was drawn one way by the hill at the bow and the other way by the valley or trough behind the bow wave. Steering was lost at that point and SMACK! She hit both banks and stuck there.

To oversimplify a bit, the ship fell into the hole in the water that it had made which caused it to lose helm and engine control.

Popular Mechanics has a page that describes the event in good detail —

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a36073961/ever-given-ship-stuck-in-suez-canal-timeline/

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