The 230-foot-long ark careened into a nearby patrol boat, the Nornen. A crane on the coast guard boat snapped; the impact punctured a large hole in the ark’s wooden skin, though because the damage was above the waterline the ship did not appear to be in danger of sinking.

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The ark was built by Dutch carpenter Johan Huibers, who said he was inspired after dreaming about a great rain that flooded his home in the Netherlands.

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To the carpenter, the dream that took seven years to complete has taken a darker turn. “I’m shaking now,” Huibers said in an interview with the New York Times. “It’s a terrible situation. It’s an awful dream, to have an accident with the ark of Noah.”

This ark is the smaller of a pair of replicas he constructed. The larger ship sits currently in a Rotterdam port; this boat was making its maiden transatlantic voyage to Brazil.

“The target is to reach Fortaleza in July, and reach the Paralympic Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro by September 7,” Herald Janssen, director of the American nonprofit group Ark of Noah Foundation, told ABC News in April. The charity is raising money to give Brazilian orphans a free tour of the ark and a Bible. It is not clear if or how long the accident will delay the trip, but Huibers said he plans to travel to Norway soon, taking his hammer and nails along to fix the hole in the side of the ark.

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Over the past decade, there has been something of a bumper crop in expensive Noah’s Ark replicas: A life-size ark opened in a Hong Kong theme park in 2009, though it eschewed realism for a water-view restaurant. Another ark is underway in Kentucky and, at 510 feet long, may be the largest of the lot. Being built to the tune of $92 million, it is the next project from Creation Museum founder and evangelist Ken Ham.