VB Flandes

At 495 gross tons, VB Flandes is the 73,952nd largest of the 84,014 vessels in this registry that report a tonnage. The median across that set is 5,994 GT, so this hull is about 12 times smaller than the typical vessel on record here. The largest measures 499,167 GT.

Among the 1,471 tugs held here, it ranks 508th by tonnage — larger than 59% of that group. Their median tonnage is 393 GT, and the largest tenth begin at 1,733 GT. The flag most often flown by this group is United States (239 ships). The yard that appears most often against it is Damen Shipyards Gorinchem, with 62 hulls on record.

VB Flandes was built in 2021, making it 5 years old. It is one of 251 hulls in this registry delivered that year, a cohort whose median tonnage is 15,776 GT; within it this ship is the 139th largest. Across the whole of the 2020s the registry holds 1,769 vessels, median 29,777 GT. The median build year across the entire registry is 1995.

The registry attributes 100 vessels to Damen Group, with a median tonnage of 450 GT, delivered between 1964 and 2025. See the rest of that yard’s output.

At 32.9 m overall, VB Flandes is within a metre of the 32.3 m median length for tugs on record.

IMO numbers are issued in broadly chronological blocks. Within 500 either side of 9809942 this registry holds 58 other vessels, whose median build year is 2018 and which range from 2016 to 2021. That places this hull’s registration in the same part of the series, consistent with its recorded build year of 2021.

Its IMO number, 9809942, carries its own check digit. The first six digits are weighted seven down to two and summed — 9×7 + 8×6 + 0×5 + 9×4 + 9×3 + 4×2 = 182 — and the last digit of that total, 2, must equal the seventh digit, 2. It does, so this number is well formed.