Watch: Large Cruise Ship Close Call in Venice Canal – Updated with AIS

A hair-raising video from over the weekend shows the Costa Deliziosa cruise ship nearly crash* during a storm in Venice’s Grand Canal on Sunday.

As you can see from the video above, the large cruise ship was navigating the canal with the assistance of two tugs when it came dangerously close to hitting a yacht docked at the Venice waterfront.

The incident comes about a month after the MSC Opera struck a moored passenger vessel in Venice, injuring four people and reigniting the debate over large cruise ships’ place in the Venice Lagoon.

We haven’t been able to verify, but as one Redditor points out, the yacht in the video appears to be the luxury yacht Equanimity (now renamed to Tranquility), which was seized by Malaysian authorities as part of the 1MDB scandal and later sold to Genting for $126 million. 

*Update: Many online have been questioning just how close the ship came was to the pier, pointing to the below video taken from a different angle: 

However, while the video above does not appear as dramatic as the first, a look at the AIS track overlaid with the ship’s dimensions shows that, at least according to the video, the ship came to within 19 meters from the wall, but unfortunately the yacht is not displayed.

So how close was it? Let us know what you think…

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