Quite!
That was pretty doggone funny, imagining that.
They had to get some cranes to Oakland a few years ago, and they had to make some very tight squeezes under the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges.
Not likely at that time.
The vessel was coming from the shipyard where it was built, going to Florida for it’s first voyage with passengers. The alcohol (and cheesecake) would probably not be loaded until it arrived in Florida.
Pfft! Like we’d ever let anything leave Finland without massive amounts of alcohol.
These modern “super liners” are the ugliest things ever to sail the seven seas. Seriously, they look like a Holiday Inn from the 1960s placed on a barge.
“WOO HOOOO! I’M THE KING OF THE WOOORR-oof” thwump
splash
And it came here. Like we’d ever let them in without bringing us massive amounts of alcohol.
brilliant!
Wow am I ever glad to have swallowed my soup before I read that.
I did the riverboat cruise in Pittsburgh, where the radar mast cleared a couple of bridges by inches.
Including my friends who went for the NHL games in October.
As far as I am aware this exercise would not require particular insurance (outside normal cover) because navigation in this waterway for this vessel would be within ordinary trading limits. The vessel’s liability for collision with fixed and floating objects would be covered by the vessel’s protection and indemnity insurer (or “P&I Club” as they are known).
The vessel’s P&I entry is not as yet displayed on publically available resources. However, Caribbean Cruises have most of their vessels with Steamship Mutual and they would therefore be my guess.
If I were to say “hell, yes!” that would be setting whole new records in understatement. This passage would have been planned to within an inch of its life. The bridge height, the measurements of the superstructure, the vessel’s draft and the tide height would have been studied to within millimetres.
A point to bear in mind is that the consequence of getting it wrong would probably not have been as spectacular as you might imagine. The very upper parts of the vessel are relatively lightly constructed masts and funnels etc. The bridge span would be massive concrete and steel. If they got it slightly wrong (and they wouldn’t get it wrong by much), all that would have happened is that the vessel would have had some relatively superficial (if highly embarrassing!) damage to extreme upper works and the bridge would have had a paint scrape.
To quote the owner of a shipping company operating between Sweden and Finland: “The beauty of a cruise ship lies in the thickness of the owner’s wallet”.
A has already been pointed out, yes, this was a very planned event and, no, this is the only possible route.
Very much so.
It wasn’t shown in the film clip in the article linked to in the OP that the funnels are retractable. A little feature included solely for this passage costing a mere 2.3 million USD.