A ship loses containers in North Sea storm

  • 14 January 2019
  • Category: Government, Maritime business, News
ship vessel

Heading to Bremerhaven, Germany, container ship MSC Zoe has been caught in a heavy storm during the night of January 2nd  2019 , resulting in the lose of about 270 containers overboard.

Following this incident, CLS’ 24/7 team of analysts relied on the CLS Maritime Awareness System to investigate on vessel’s behavior and sea state before the incident.

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losed containers in North Sea-storm

On January, 2nd 2019 at 00:35 (UTC), MSC Zoe changed suddenly its route while navigating in traffic separation scheme. Vessel reduced its speed from 9 Kt to 6 Kt, then heading again at 9Kt whereas vessel was crossing a forbidden area avoiding a wind farm.

During this change, vessel started to slow down (from 9Kt to 3Kt) then almost stopped from 03:00 (UTC) to 08:30 (UTC). After that, vessel set out slowly, with a 3 Kt speed then, once back in its route, got under way reaching 8 Kt speed.

According to the Dutch and German coastguards, MSC Zoe lost at least 270 containers including four holding potentially dangerous substances such as organic peroxide, a highly flammable substance used in making plastics.

Sentinel 1B image from January 2nd 2019 at 05:56 (UTC)
Sentinel 1B image from January 2nd 2019 at 05:56 (UTC). A ship echo corresponding to MSC ZOE while stopped is detected on this SAR image. No nearby ships are detected and no containers at sea are detected on this image.
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