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This episode contains strong language.

Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture,

politics and new thinking.

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It's a little bit of utopia.

The dream of replacing container ships with sailing boats by Wendell Stevenson.

Now it's one of the world's most important shipping routes and it's blocked.

Last March, the whole world saw one of the largest cargo ships in existence,

400 meters long weighing 265,000 tons loaded with 20,000 shipping containers

get stuck in the Suez Canal.

Tug boats are making some progress in freeing the boat.

The six days, tiny tugs tried to nudge the ever-given off a sand bar.

The urgent effort to unplug the Suez Canal, that massive container ship still stuck.

Waiting at both ends of the canal, were more than 300 cargo ships and tankers

carrying petrol, semiconductors, microchips, scrunchy hairbands, sneakers,

hand-held travel steamers, ice cream makers, novelty socks and electric milk frothers.

As the global supply chain ground to a halt, we became aware that 90% of everything in our homes,

clothes, appliances, food, has, at some point, been transported by sea.

Cargo ships burn some of the dirtiest fuel going, known as bunker.

Made from the sludgy leftovers of petrol refining, it is as viscous and black as molasses

and full of sulfur.

...