Sunday, July 19, 2009

Ships sitting idle

From the NY Times: About 700 ships are currently just sitting around doing nothing, moored off Singapore. Apparantly there is not much cargo needing moving these days.


The photo is a hint, but you don't really begin to grasp the situation until you start poking around with google maps.

Check this and this and this and this out. Those are the biggest groups I found, but there are stationary ships scattered around the entire area.

Apparantly there are another 300 outside Rotterdam, The Netherlands and another 150 at the Straits of Gibraltar. Google maps doesn't have high res shots of the sea outside Rotterdam, but I found some of Gibraltar. There are probably more outside the bay.

This is a big change from March, when there were only 435 ships world-wide doing nothing.

Now's the time to think about building a house out of old, unwanted shipping containers. I'm sure there are plenty going for cheap or free.