The voyage of the Matson Maunalei

December 13, 2012 2:54 PM

Gorgeous time lapse footage of the journey of the M/V Matson Maunalei loading up in Honolulu and taking the 35 day trip to Long Beach. As you probably know, those containers on the merchant ship are filled with pallets, the single most important object in the global economy , previously. Shipping containers on Metafilter.
posted by cushie (19 comments total)

Fill one container with USB drives... amazing bandwidth.

Pretty terrible latency though.
posted by GuyZero at 3:01 PM on December 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

I enjoy seeing the ship being pushed up against the wharf by unseen tugboats. At the accelerated speed, when the tugboats scamper away, they seem so impish.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:10 PM on December 13, 2012

There has to be a lot more going on than a straight shot from Honolulu to Long Beach. That trip should only take a week. 35 days to cover 2500 miles is barely walking speed.
posted by indyz at 3:14 PM on December 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Some pretty impressive parallel parking in there.
posted by scottatdrake at 3:17 PM on December 13, 2012

There has to be a lot more going on than a straight shot from Honolulu to Long Beach.

I don't wish to be overly snarky but I've only watched 47 seconds of the film so far, but have already seen a caption saying Guam, so clearly there is more going on. Watching the entire 3:35 minutes will no doubt give me much more information.
posted by jontyjago at 3:18 PM on December 13, 2012

OK, it didn't give me much more information! But, nice vid!
posted by jontyjago at 3:21 PM on December 13, 2012

I watched the whole thing before I posted (I really try not to be that guy) and I noticed that there were several different ports, but somehow I completely missed every single caption. Just captivated by the time lapse, I guess. Honolulu, Guam, Xiamen, Long Beach is 13000 miles as the crow flies, which pretty well accounts for 35 days.

And yes, very nice video.
posted by indyz at 3:45 PM on December 13, 2012

Containers loading in Hawaii. What does Hawaii export? Wikipedia says food an apparel - anything else?
posted by mattoxic at 4:16 PM on December 13, 2012

I sorta wanted the ship to drift and slide up into its berthing spot at Long Beach... but that was awesome.
posted by mrbill at 4:42 PM on December 13, 2012

Containers loading in Hawaii. What does Hawaii export? Wikipedia says food an apparel - anything else?

Presidents.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:49 PM on December 13, 2012 [10 favorites]

An itinerary, from here:

2012 November 5th, 03:00:56 UTC	Honolulu
2012 October 28th, 18:00:40 UTC	Long Beach
2012 October 16th, 23:50:42 UTC	Shanghai
2012 October 13th, 23:00:56 UTC	Xiamen
2012 October 1st, 14:00:45 UTC	Long Beach
2012 October 1st, 11:00:35 UTC	Shanghai
2012 September 23rd, 11:00:46 UTC	Long Beach
2012 September 11th, 23:00:57 UTC	Shanghai
2012 September 1st, 06:00:09 UTC	Ningbo

And from here:

Dec 13, 2012, 03:05 UTC	HONOLULU	  USA
Nov 20, 2012, 10:04 UTC	BEILUN	  China
Oct 16, 2012, 17:00 UTC	BEILUN	  China

More. Still more.
posted by The White Hat at 5:26 PM on December 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hmm... something is not right about that timeline. Only 3 hours between Shanghai and Long Beach on Oct. 1st?
posted by spudsilo at 6:23 PM on December 13, 2012

The international date line is a mysterious thing.
posted by peeedro at 6:26 PM on December 13, 2012

The international date line doesn't affect UTC, does it?
posted by Sys Rq at 6:59 PM on December 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you have 5 days available you can watch an entire an cruise along the mid-summer Norwegian coast as previously noted on MeFi.
posted by incandissonance at 7:00 PM on December 13, 2012

I used to work in the logistics industry in the LA area (and I currently live in Long Beach) so I've learned quite a bit about the port of Long Beach/ Los Angeles. It's really one of the most fascinating yet mostly hidden parts of what makes the country tick. A few things that might be of interest that are related to this short:

-The bridge that the ship goes under at about 2:47 is actually way too squat for many of the container ships these days. They're gearing up to replace it, but it's too important a bridge for it not to be there even for a short period of time. The plan is to build the replacement right next to it and then knock this old one down when they're done.

-The turn that the ship begins to make at 2:50 is supposedly really tricky, but a single family owned business of harbor pilots pulls it off flawlessly over a dozen times a day.

-The port, despite being one of the largest and most important in the world, is not naturally in a very good location with regard to being protected from strong wave action. It is instead protected by one of the largest man-made breakwaters in the world.

-While the breakwater directly in front of the port (the "middle" breakwater) is very important, most of the city of Long Beach is united in getting rid of or modifying the Long Beach breakwater, which was built in WWII by the federal government and then left when the naval base closed. Funding is a big issue (the federal government should really be pitching in), in addition to worries about risks to houses that were built in areas that would normally be highly likely to get washed out to sea during a big storm if wave action wasn't impeded like it is now.
posted by Defenestrator at 7:23 PM on December 13, 2012 [8 favorites]

Harbor pilot is a pretty good gig, tough hours and it's gotta be scary in rough weather to climb up a ladder out in the ocean, but the small group of pilots basically split the fees and for a busy port that can be very lucrative. Very.
posted by sammyo at 7:49 PM on December 13, 2012

Can you even do a straight shot from Honolulu to Long Beach? Something to do with the currents...
posted by Brocktoon at 8:53 PM on December 13, 2012

For all your pallet-stacking obsession needs...
posted by IAmBroom at 11:00 AM on December 14, 2012