Containers overboard = danger to navigation, by Heloisa Schurmann
Wednesday February 26th, 2014

On last February 17, the Danish-flagged ship Svendborg Maersk was caught by a heavy storm with winds of over 60 knots and waves over 30 feet in the Bay of Biscay, in the coast of France. Upon arriving at the Spanish port of Malaga, Maersk found out that about 520 of the 7,200 containers they were transporting had been lost at sea. This is the biggest loss of containers ever registered in a single incident at sea.

All over the world, 5 to 6 million containers are transported by ships every day, and it is estimated that about 10,000 containers fall from ships and are lost at sea every year. The French environmental group Robin des Bois stated they will sue the Maersk for not notifying the loss of the containers immediately when it happened, putting lives and other ships at risk, as well as polluting the seas.

The company responsible for the Maersk announced that most of the containers lost won't float for too long, specially in rough seas. But the New Zealander insurance company Vero Marine says that a 20 feet sealed container can float for up to 2 months, while a 40 feet could even float for up to 6 months!

Containers lost at sea are one of the worst threats to sailboats! Our friends Karin and André, from the sailboat Natchez, disappeared in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 1990, in an area where a ship had previously lost 18 containers. Recently the subject was brought up by the movie "All is Lost", starred by Robert Redford.

(Photos: CNN.com - http://cnn.it/1hoiLEg)

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