Frens, here's your Sunday evening (evening in Egypt, anyway) Ever Given update: It's 7:30 pm, local time, and the convoys are leaving the Great Bitter Lake. Who's left? Big EG, the Chinese heavy load carrier, XIANG RUI KOU - it's reported that this vessel is carrying a dredger and plans to offload it somewhere to dredge something (will keep tabs, but my guess is the section of the canal at the extreme southern edge of the lake where two other vessels briefly ran aground last week).
Aaannnnd.....as of 4 hours ago, the mystery cargo ship satellite ping is back! Right alongside EG, where it was spotted yesterday. What is it, what is it doing there? I don't know - but it's definitely something to watch!
The UHL FAME, with its big cranes, anchored for a while in the lake about 2.5 nm away from EG. It got our attention, but never got very close to EG for any length of time, and is now transiting north in the canal, so no lifting maneuvers out of that one.
At the moment, there are no tugs in the lake, but there are two of them (SALAM 9 and SALAM 6) headed that way from the south.
Here's more info about the dredger aboard the China XRK vessel....it's supposed to be the first of two huge dredger ships, contracted by the Canal Authority back in 2017 and will be part of the Canal Authority's fleet. This dredger ship, called MOHAB MAMISH will be berthed in the Great Bitter Lake full-time. What I find most interesting about all this is the timing of its arrival - it set sail from the Netherlands just 4 days after Big EG ran aground. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. But I bet the EG situation might have turned out very differently if this dredger was already on the scene to deal with it.
https://www.urdupoint.com/en/miscellaneous/suez-canal-receives-mideast-largest-dredge-1218874.html
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/100718/What-you-need-to-know-about-Egypt-s-CSD-Mamish