After months of drama surrounding Jeff Bezos’s $500 million sailing yacht and Rotterdam’s iconic Koningshaven Bridge, the unfinished Oceanco Y721 finally left its drydock earlier this week for another Dutch shipyard where its three massive masts will be attached.
The original plan was to temporarily dismantle a section of the old bridge to let the Amazon founder’s new luxury ship pass through. However, Oceanco had to drop the plan after thousands of locals decided to protest against it and the news attracted a lot of attention across the globe. The Dutch shipbuilding company transported the vessel in the wee hours in the most inconspicuous way to avoid further attention from the world media.
However, enthusiasts like Hanco Bol from the yacht fan club Dutch Yachting managed to capture the Y721 hitting the water for the first time and getting towed to a different shipyard. But it wasn’t very easy for Bol as Oceanco tried different tricks to avoid Bezos’s new toy getting captured on video or photos.
Bol followed the transport by car and took videos and photos along the way for his YouTube channel. Narrating his experience to the German newspaper Spiegel, the yacht expert said that Oceanco started preparations for the transport of the vessel at 1 AM and the transport to the Greenport shipyard started at 3 AM. Bol went on to say that the sailing yacht reached its destination in just three hours, which is unusually fast. Furthermore, the luxury superyacht was transported via an unusual route rather than the standard route which passes through the city center and the Koningshaven Bridge. The chosen route passing through narrow canals is also much longer than the standard path.
Was Oceanco expecting protestors ready to throw rotten eggs at the vessel? Well, the yacht expert says the company might have wanted to avoid pictures of the controversial superyacht under the bridge and thus selected the longer, darker southwest route and the nighttime. Bol also claims that those transporting the superyacht also tried to deter him from capturing videos. “When I was standing on one of the bridges, they shined a searchlight on me, so it wasn’t easy for me to take pictures,” Bol said. The three masts will be attached to the vessel at the Greenport shipyard over the next few weeks before the sailing yacht heads out for its sea trials.
