Again, a container ship lost hundreds of boxes in the North Pacific as it passed through exceptional swell. On Saturday January 16, the Maersk Essen, a 366.45-meter and 13,100 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent) vessel lost around 750 containers near the Hawaiian archipelago affected at the same time by an extraordinary swell.
It appears that he was then 430 miles northeast of Honolulu. A storm located about 1,500 miles from Hawaii with winds of 40 to 60 knots had generated a huge swell 40 to 50 feet (12 to 15 meters) long. If the winds were relatively weak in the archipelago at that time, this swell generated towards the Aleutians gave rise to record waves in the archipelago which also saw an influx of surfers from all over the world for the occasion.
These weather conditions are reminiscent of those of the accident of the ONE Apus container ship, which lost 1,816 containers on November 30. En route from Yantian (China) for Long Beach (United States), he also encountered an exceptional long northwesterly swell, about 1,600 miles northwest of Hawaii. At the time, it was the biggest swell in the area for a year, with a very long period of 21 seconds measured on a buoy about 270 miles northwest of the island of Kauai.
Certain observers then suspected a phenomenon of parametric roll which amplifies the natural roll of the ship. It occurs in particular on large container ships, in certain specific swell conditions which resonate with the characteristics of the ships (such as the swell period which must be close to the natural half period of the roll). Parametric roll can roll the ship 30 to 40 degrees or more, causing great damage to the cargo that can come loose.
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