The story of Noah’s Ark is well known throughout the world.
In the early 1990s, a Dutch carpenter, Johan Huibers, had a dream in which he saw a great flood, just like the one in the story of Noah’s Ark, and it destroyed the Netherlands, where he lived.
He decided to build an ark, initially halving the original dimensions given in the bible (300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high), from Swedish pine trees and it took him about three years to build it between 2005 and 2007 .
Spurred on, he then built a second, larger, ark that took 4 years to build and had five decks It opened to the public in 2012 in the port of Dordrecht, (Johan Huibers’ home town) and was 29m wide, 125m long and weighed 2,2268 tonnes, and could fit over 5,000 people inside of it at once in addition to the various animals made of wood!
Unfortunately, after disagreements with town officials, it was shut down and it moved to Rotterdam in 2016 rather than sailing to the 2016 Rio Olympics as was Johan’s hope .
In June 2016 the smaller ark of the two reconstructions built by Johan that had been bought by Aad Peters, a Dutch puppeteer, television producer and philanthropist in 2010, was being towed in the Port of Oslo when the crew somehow lost control of it and it crashed into a Norwegian Coast Guard patrol boat damaging the ark’s wooden cladding. Mr. Peters had previously taken the ark to visit towns across the Netherlands and was preparing to do the same in Norway when the collision occurred.
Both the arks built by Johan Huibers are built on steel barges, and neither has an engine so the only way to move them anywhere is to tow them.
Johan’s latest plan is to try and sail the ark to Israel and is currently raising the vast funds required to rent the necessary tug boats to get it there.
Enjoy exploring the ark further via this video Ark of Noah VR Tour
