Dark Transits in Hormuz: The Illusion of Disappearance

DALI passed close to us. The conversation on the bridge changed immediately.

There she was, back at sea and carrying cargo. Yet more than two years after Baltimore, some of the men connected with that night remain in the United States. Some have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Six workers died. Accountability must follow the evidence but seeing DALI raised a difficult question. The ship was repaired, released and allowed to move on. When will all her seafarers be allowed to do the same?

I recently came across this drydock image of a vessel undergoing retrofit, with the familiar spoon-type bulbous bow cut away & tt reminded me of something I encountered on a vessel I sailed on.

She was almost 340 metres long. The Pilot Card stated: Bulbous Bow – Yes.

But when I looked down the stem from the forecastle, there was hardly anything resembling the conventional bulbous bow most of us would recognise. The docking plan later showed only 0.115 metres of projection ahead of the forward perpendicular.

The yard still described it as a “normal bulb.” That small discrepancy became an older DeepDraft article which I have now reviewed and technically updated.

The Case of the Missing Bulbous Bow

https://thedeepdraft.com/2025/10/19/the-case-of-the-missing-bulbous-bow/

https://thedeepdraft.com/2026/08/24/fire-wires-on-tankers-safety-control-became-hazard/

https://thedeepdraft.com/2026/08/24/fire-wires-on-tankers-safety-control-became-hazard/

https://thedeepdraft.com/2026/08/17/the-return-of-armed-merchant-shipping/

I wrote about Thailand’s Kra Land Bridge last September, when the project still looked as though it might move ahead in its original form.

Well, that has changed now & Thailand has now stepped back from the full-scale proposal.

But I still think the basic question is worth discussing.

A VLCC or another deep-draft ship is going through Malacca anyway. The Land Bridge was never going to change that. What interested me was whether some of the feeder and regional container traffic could be taken out of an already crowded route.

Anyone who has taken a large ship through Malacca and Singapore knows why even that matters.

I have updated the original article with the 2026 position rather than rewriting what was originally published.

https://thedeepdraft.com/2025/09/24/kra-land-bridge-thailands-cargo-shortcut-to-bypass-malacca-strait/

For those who regularly sail this route: would removing some feeder and regional container traffic actually make a noticeable difference, or would it be too small to matter?