The saga of Jeff Bezos’s historic superyacht, named Y721, continues. You may remember the vessel’s record-breaking beginnings, when it was announced the boat would be the largest sailing yacht in the world and the longest constructed in the Netherlands. But none of this came without a cost—and not just the yacht’s $500,000,000 price tag: The watercraft’s controversial existence hit a climax when it was announced that an iconic Dutch bridge, De Hef, would be dismantled to allow the vessel to pass through the Koningshaven channel. Dutch residents even claimed they’d throw rotten eggs at the boat while it passed through the channel.
Things started to smooth over when Oceanco, the company building the yacht, backtracked on plans to take apart the bridge, but this didn’t change the fact that the boat was still too big to get out of the port where it was being built. Now, the vessel’s story arc may be reaching it’s resolution with the news that the superyacht was towed out of the channel early Tuesday morning to Greenport, another shipping yard. Pulled without the sails intact, the yacht’s construction will finish at Greenport before it hits the open sea.
The Youtube channel Dutch Yachting caught the vessels’ surprise departure and posted a video of it leaving the shipping yard to the video sharing site. The channel noted in the video’s description that the boat took a slightly unexpected route, traveling along a purposefully longer route to avoid passing under De Hef. However, the boat still moved at a remarkable pace. “We never saw a transport going that fast,” Dutch Yachting wrote in the description. Y721 made it to the Greenport yard in just three hours.
Many speculated the boat’s bandit-like escape beneath the covers of the night was done to avoid any more bad press and public outrage. It seems the egg threat worked, and Dutch residents can avoid an extra trip to the grocery store.
