A Windward maritime-risk assessment dated 30 July, republished by Hellenic Shipping News, put total Bab el-Mandeb crossings down 22% since the Houthi blockade declaration of 20 July, from about 47.8 a day to 37.21. Tanker transits fell 39% over the same stretch. Saudi-linked tanker transits fell 46%, thinning to roughly 7.5 a day once Lloyd's-market war-risk cover for those hulls lapsed on 24 July2. Bab el-Mandeb is the strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, and it carries the short leg from Saudi loading terminals to refineries in Italy, Spain and Greece.
The sequence began with fire and ended with paperwork. The Houthis declared the blockade and struck two tankers on 23 July. Underwriters then pulled cover for Saudi-linked vessels, and the transit count collapsed after that, not before it. Saudi Arabia had already stopped sending crude through the strait and pushed the volume north through Suez instead, so the withdrawal hardens a reroute already under way and stacks on top of the per-voyage Suezmax penalty this desk priced last week.
Cover and premium behave differently, which is why 7.5 transits a day should be read as sticky rather than as a spot low. A war-risk rate can be argued down inside a week once the loss record cools, as it was at the Strait of Hormuz through late June. A withdrawal removes the contract for a defined class of vessel, and reinstating it needs an underwriting committee to accept that class again. Owners will not sail an uninsured hull past a declared blockade, and no premium is on offer to change that.
Windward also logged three Chinese-linked supertankers crossing unmolested on 23 and 24 July, and read that as a carve-out from the blockade3. No party has stated one. Every number above rests on that single assessment; no insurer, broker or Lloyd's primary source was reached to confirm the withdrawal or its scope.
