[imagesource: Tom van Oossanen]

Big ships and canals are kind of a big deal right now.

Never again will I hear the words ‘Suez Canal’ without thinking of the Ever Given, wedged in there, blocking a pivotal global trade route but delivering some wonderful memes.

That drama is far from over, with the Ever Given seized amidst a massive legal dispute and the crew onboard stuck for the foreseeable future.

But let’s rather focus on a canal mission with a happier ending, and the transportation of Project 817, a 94-metre vessel built by Dutch shipyard Feadship.

Project 817 was transported from its Kaag Island facility to the North Sea at Rotterdam, via some rather narrow canals.

Photographer Tom van Oossanen was on hand to capture the tight squeeze, reports CNN:

…the vessel, one of the largest to be launched in 2021, is guided through the water with tugboats, passing by houses and churches, as crowds look on in amazement.

Image: Tom van Oossanen

According to Oossanen, around four to six superyachts are transferred along this route each year before going for sea trials, which usually take place in Amsterdam.

However, few are as big as Project 817, likely to be known as Viva when it officially launches.

It’s great fun watching on, unless you happen to be in a rush. Some of the bridges it passes through can remain closed for a full hour, making dashing around rather cumbersome.

Great skill from everybody involved, really:

In total, the transportation of Project 817 took around four days, with the vessel fully designed to actually fit the waterway, almost to the centimetre:

During the first stage of the operation, Viva was moved from the Kaag Island shipyard to Lake Braassemermeer, where it was fitted with pontoons to raise it up, thus ensuring it wasn’t too deep to maneuver through the canals.

Tug boats were then attached to the pontoons on either side of the superyacht, which was also wrapped with protective foil, in order to guide the vessel through the water with precision.

Image: Tom van Oossanen

By this point, it was ready to be pushed and pulled along the canals, making its way across a small bridge in the tiny village of Woubrugge, as well as Alphen aan den Rijn, a town in the west of Holland, before reaching the Dutch city Gouda, located south of Amsterdam, a few days later.

Feadship confirmed that the vessel successfully reached Rotterdam, and trials on the open sea will begin soon.

With perhaps the hardest part behind it, the boatmakers will be quietly confident.

[source:cnn]