The last ship in Lindblad/National Geographic’s Jones-act vessels, the National Geographic Venture has been launched. The event took place last week at Washington’s Nichols Brothers Boat Builders. What’s unique about this is that they still employ the old fashioned slipway to launch their ships and slide the vessel down it into the water. Nowadays when ships are built, much larger that this one, they are placed in a dry dock and to get the vessel to the sea they simply flood the dock.
Whats even more unique about the way Nichols Brothers does things is that the slipway actually crosses a road. You can see for yourself in the below video: