Video: Tight fit as huge super yacht squeezes down Dutch canals
The picturesque, but narrow Dutch canals hosted a 94-meter luxury super yacht last week. The enormous vessel dwarfed adjacent buildings as it squeezed its way out to the sea to begin sea trials.
“Project 817”, a 94-meter super yacht built by Dutch yard, Feadship, was seen inching its way to the sea in last week. The huge vessel looked incongruous as it squeezed past historic buildings and held up traffic as it left Feadship’s Kaag Island facility on its way to Rotterdam for sea trials.
The mammoth yacht was caught on camera as it was guided on its way to the sea by tugs and crowds of onlookers gazed in amazement as it passed medieval churches and houses.
The vessel is one of four to six that are transferred along the route every year, but few are as large as Project 817, likely to be known as Viva when she is officially launched.
Moving vessels this size through Holland’s inland waterways is always a big undertaking and residents are well aware that traffic can be held up for long periods as bridges are raised.
Feadship designed the yacht with very little room to spare — a few feet either way and she would never have got through. At some points the topsides of the yacht came within inches of the sides of the canals, and in order for the yacht to clear the bottom of the shallow canals she had to be fitted with pontoons to raise her draft.
Kaag Island is one of two Feadship yards based inland (the other is at Aalsmeer), meaning each and every vessels they build must be towed carefully to the open sea.
