Tugs and dredgers have been making some progress in refloated the stranded ultra-large container ship, Ever Given, that has blocked traffic in the Suez Canal since last Tuesday.  The next best hope of freeing the stranded ship will come on Monday on the “king tide,” an exceptionally high tide. Whether sufficient dredging in way of the ship’s bow will be completed in time to make this possible, remains to be seen. 

On Saturday, tugs succeeded in moving the stern of the ship by about 2 degrees or 100 feet. The ship’s rudder and propeller are both now clear. The bow, however, remains firmly buried in sand and clay.

The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) reports that dredgers had so far shifted 27,000 cubic meters of sand to a depth of 18m (59ft). They also said that a mass of rock had been discovered under the bow of the ship, complicating the situation.

In the event that the ship cannot be refloated on Monday’s tide, Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has ordered preparations to lighten the load of the stranded ship. That would involve transferring some containers to another vessel or to the canal bank. Experts earlier told the BBC that such an operation would involve bringing in specialist equipment, including a crane that would need to stretch more than 60m (200ft) high, and could take weeks. For comparison purposes, the mast height of the clipper ship Cutty Sark is 152 feet.

Currently, more than 300 ships are stuck on either side of the canal blockage and some vessels have had to reroute around Africa. 

The New York Times notes that the shutdown of the canal is affecting as much as 15 percent of the world’s container shipping capacity, according to Moody’s Investor Service, leading to delays at ports around the globe. Tankers carrying 9.8 million barrels of crude, about a tenth of a day’s global consumption, are now waiting to enter the canal, estimates Kpler, a firm that tracks petroleum shipping.