Ship ahoy!

On the way to the Airport in the morning, I was surprised to see a huge ship anchored right off Shankumugham Beach! At first, I thought its captain had taken a week bit too much of tipple, inspired perhaps by his colleague who drove the Exxon Valdez on to the rocks, and run the ship aground. One would have thought a ship this big couldn't be safely anchored this close in, but then I remembered that Trivandrum has very deep coastal waters. Just a mile offshore, the sea bed falls away steeply to about 20 m and upto 25 m in places. This is the reason why India's deepest port is being proposed right here.

To put things in perspective, the average natural depth at Vizhinjam is 18 m, which is 6 m more than the peak depth which can be achieved with massive dredging at a port like Kochi (of course, when CPT's dredgers are not colliding with each other or with any convenient bridge, in the vicinity, lol!) With a peak depth of upto 25 m, Vizhinjam can accomodate the world's largest ship, the 550,000 ton Jahre Viking which is so enormous that it can't enter any current port in the world, when fully loaded. If a big ship, like the one off Shankumugham, approached so close anywhere else, say at Cherai beach near Cochin, the only way it would leave is if a bunch of tugs ripped it off the sand or it was cut to pieces (Rust in Pieces...I guess. Oops, bad one!).

Hope all those morons - some of them can be found spouting garbage online and in the media - who still doubt the urgent need to have a deep water port at Vizhinjam will take a morning walk along the Beach and see the proof. Mr. Baalu & Co., are you reading this?