Mystery with the tree under sail

Georgia, Black Sea, 2016.

200-year-old tree.

First I thought it was a computer animation -- a huge living tree, sailing on board the ship in the sea! A frame form Pirates of the Caribbean. At World's End. Seems to be true -- Georgia, where the images come from, is at Europe's end. And this is not shopped. The 200-year-old, 50 m in hight, weighing 650 tons, the tree is called "canoewood" or Liriodendron tulipifera. It was dug out near the Georgian coastal village Tsikhisdziri to be shipped to another place in Georgia near the coast to be planted in the dendrological park.

Estimation works.

*

Spadework.

*

Fixing the rootage.

The tree was loadded on the truck. Had there been any trafic road, unusual load and size would have made the traffic dangeros. Fortunately, there were no traffic road available in the area so that a dedicated road was built exclusively to deliver the load to the coast a few kilometres away.

Truck load.

*

You would notice dudes keeping hands in pockets both figuratively and literally almost on every photo.

*

Approaching the sea shore.

*

Construction of the road, dedicated to the tree haulage. Road base being covered with prefabricated reinforced concrete slabs usually used for airport runways to bear the extraordinary load.

Fixed with ropes to the deck and root system enclosed into a tight "belt" of timber and ropes both to keep the native soil and make the tree stable while on the deck, the tree was anchored for 3 days in the open sea near the proposed place of unshipping while a fleet of earthmoving machines dug the beach wide and deep enough to let the boat tie up at the bank.

Sailing tree on board the ship pending completion of construction works on coast.

*

View from the beach.

*

Backhoe at work.

*

Finally the beach was ready to unship the tree.

Bulldozer towing the ship.

*

Debarkation.

*

Again, hands in pockets.

*

The destination place is a private area. Experts claim that adult trees have 50/50 chances of striking roots if planted in a new environment.