> If the Ever Given really was ran aground to due a once-in-a-75-year-sandstorm then it's hardly the fault of either the captain or the port authority to predict such a freak weather occurrence.

An interesting hypothesis that I ran across (on gCaptain? blancolirio?) is that it may actually have been a wind lull that caused the issue.

There was supposedly a steady cross wind in the area in question, and given the ship is 400m long and 13 storeys high, that's a lot of area. The wind seems to have been coming from the west/port-side, so the ship had rudder to port to counteract the pushing to starboard/east.

When the wind dropped suddenly, the pushing-to-starboard force suddenly disappeared, and so the steering to port all of a sudden became 'unnecessary' and if it was not corrected soon enough may have been the reason why the ship steered to port and into the channel wall.

Just an hypothesis though.

I'm sure a sorts of folks will be looking at the sensor logs.

I wonder if the Canal authority has any kind of instruments along the route to measure conditions. If not, they should consider it. Perhaps set up some "buoys" on land next to the channel that broadcast things out via AIS so pilots and captains can see things on their chart plotters.