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A massive container ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal for six days has swung back across the channel amid high wind on Monday, after being partially refloated.
The Ever Given ship’s bow was afloat in the water despite its change of position and the vessel had not become regrounded, according to Reuters.
The change in position comes ahead of the next attempt to fully dislodge the ship.
In the early hours of Monday morning, ongoing efforts to unblock the Suez Canal finally yielded results as workers were able to “partially” refloat it and move it from the shore during high tide.
Canal service firm Leth Agencies said the modest breakthrough came after around 10 tugboats and several dredgers worked to push and pull the 400m-long vessel free.
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his first comment on the vessel as salvage work was ongoing, writing on Facebook that “Egyptians have succeeded in ending the crisis” of the stranded ship despite the operation’s “massive technical complexity”.
But the salvage crew working to free the ship warned that there was still much work to do to clear the canal, as the ship remains stuck at the canal’s edge.
“Don’t cheer too soon,” Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, told Dutch NPO Radio 1.
“The good news is that the stern is free but we saw that as the simplest part of the job,” said Berdowski, adding that the biggest challenge remained at the front of the ship, where workers would struggle to haul the fully laden 220,000-ton vessel over the clay of the canal bank.
An official at Shoei Kisen Kaisha, the company that owns the Ever Given, confirmed the vessel’s bow had moved slightly, but warned the bottom of the ship was still touching the seafloor. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Additional reporting by agencies
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