June 2, 1997 Duluth, MN
The Spar Opal from Bergen, Norway lay at anchor just inside the harbor, near the Aerial Lift Bridge. The port bow anchor chain extended, the ship pointed towards Lake Superior, positioned by the cool wind that had been steadily blowing from the east. The east wind had been the rule for several days, creating surf that stirred up the silt from the beach, suspending fine particles and turning the usually crystal blue waters of the lake a murky light brown. Even the flow of water from the St. Louis River, thru the ship canal, was overcome by the turbidity. The front of clear river (harbor) water extended but a few meters past the Canal Park lighthouses, the sharp boundary between the brown and blue creating a watery crescent connecting the two piers.
Another foreign ship, the Nea Elpis from Greece, was anchored in the lake a little way offshore, waiting her turn to load wheat from Cargill, to take to Spain. According to the Duluth Shipping News, she had arrived on Saturday, May 31. Later in the afternoon she would enter the harbor with the help of tugs and go to a dock directly in line with the ship canal where she had just entered. We would arrive at the scene a few minutes too late, catching sight of her just as the tugs pushed her against the dock.
As we parked on the dock, at the center of the Duluth-Superior Harbor, the Spar Opal was to our left and, to our right, the Algontario was unloading at the St. Lawrence Cement plant. Her 21,000 ton cargo would fill half of the capacity of the silos. Railroad cars and semi's were already being filled to distribute cement to businesses across the Midwest. Ships at St. Lawrence can be observed closely from the unique Garfield Ave. fishing pier. We continued on.
The Canal Park Marine Museum's boatwatching schedule TV showed no apparent departures or arrivals in the immediate future, so we headed for the Lake Superior Zoological Gardens ten minutes south. The animals were VERY active today! A magnificent Pea cock met us at the entrance. A newborn donkey at the children's zoo was a big hit with his HUGE ears, big head, LONG legs, and totally cute fuzziness. It was Wendy's, my wife, and my daughter Amber's favorite creature this trip. My daughter Erin's favorite were the seals, who were swimming around watching us watching them swim. We were all fascinated by the Gorals, a rare and new animal from Mongolia that looks like a mix of sheep, goat and deer. Even the Slow Loris in the nocturnal exhibit was speeding around today! The zoo gift shop was glad to see us. When we walked out they had one less t-shirt, and three less stuffed (TOY!) animals. Glad we're members so we could get a discount! The only thing I didn't like about the zoo was that a couple of ships snuck out while we were there. :-(
Lunch time found us at Enger Park, where we had the place to ourselves, this being a Monday, everyone else was working. I didn't feel guilty as I had just put in two sixteen hour days planting corn. Come to think of it, everywhere we went, there was a distinct lack of crowds. :-) The extensive rock gardens were in their spring prime, the fresh young leaves and many blooms invigorating to the still lingering mental dreariness caused by the LONG winter. Every time we visit Enger Park, the rock gardens have grown in area, becoming quite extensive and very impressive. Picnic tables scattered here and there allow you to sit and eat, and enjoy the beauty. Before eating, I took a quick run up over the hill to scope out the harbor for signs of ship movement. Whatever ship that I had noticed earlier loading taconite at the Missabe Ore Docks was still there. Nothing else seemed to be moving in the entire harbor and I had a birds eye view of it from atop the 600 ft high cliffs. The Spar Opal floated motionless in the harbor near the lift bridge. Huge storage silos blocked my view of the Algontario at St. Lawrence Cement. I think it had already gone, leaving while we were at the zoo.
Lunch done, I decided to explore. Each trip I like to find something new. This time it was Chester Park. Like many of the parks in town, Chester turned out to be a small, but beautiful gorge that cut thru the center of an old residential neighborhood, where no level land could be found, and the yards tilted at uneasy angles. I knew we were close to "something" when all the roads to the east turned into dead ends. Driving downhill past the dead ends for many blocks, we finally came to the lower end of the park and the entrance road that would take us back uphill, into the park proper. The road hugged the edge of a deep ravine on one side and the front yards of very old but well maintained homes on the other. As we neared the parking area, we came upon a construction site where the bridge over the creek was being replaced. Part of the work crew was involved in doing stonework under the new bridge, stonework that covered the ugly bare concrete and steel. This bridge would have to be designed to be esthetically pleasing because it crossed the gorge at a very scenic spot where several hiking trails converged, and people would be seeing the bottom of the bridge just as much as the top.
After threading our way past the construction site, we entered the gorge itself, delighting in the cool, rocky surfaces where the small creek tumbled and pooled on it's way to the lake. This was my favorite kind of stream, one that could be crossed at almost any point by jumping from rock to rock. Unless you slip, as my wife did, you can easily keep dry; although on a hot summer day it would certainly be more fun to wade and/or soak your feet, on purpose. And that's just what we did a little while later, cooling hot, tired feet in a natural whirlpool bath, a spot where you could sit on a bedrock ledge and dangle your feet in tiny potholes, swirling with not quite cold water. The stream at this point was constricted to less than two feet across and the flow couldn't have been more than a thousand gallons a minute, but I was impressed. We sat in the stream bed at a point a few dozen feet upstream of a footbridge that connects the paths that follow the stream banks on either side of this priceless treasure. The footbridge was constructed at point just below one of the larger drops, a drop of twenty or thirty feet, one of the few truly difficult if not impassable spots to climb. After a twenty minute, million dollar rest, we pulled our thoroughly invigorated limbs out to dry before reluctantly moving on.
Shipwatching had been poor thus far, and we now seemed to have missed another ship leaving, it's presence known only as a small smudge disappearing on the horizon. Nevertheless, I didn't give up hope and stopped to check the schedule at the Marine Museum before leaving for home. No luck. The only ship traffic predicted was hours away and, alas, as we could not linger, we left.
The Garfield Ave. fishing pier and boat landing has become my last stop before crossing the Blatnik Bridge and returning to Wisconsin. It only takes a few minutes to check for boat movements as you sit in the boat landing parking lot or drive to the edge of the water at the public marine terminal. In the next 40 minutes or so we would see a flurry of activity. I first noticed the Kaye E. Barker moving towards us from the Wisconsin side of the harbor, after (according to what I later read in the Duluth Shipping News) dropping off a load of stone. We maintained our position as she seemed to be coming right by where we sat. She fooled me, however, as she turned to go under the Blatnik, deeper into the harbor. "Well," I said, "let's go back to the boat landing parking lot and I can take her picture coming under the bridge." Just as I was getting back in the van, I noticed two tugboats moving around the Spar Opal. All right! She must be going to move! We zipped over to see the Barker, then right back again to watch the Opal.
Binoculars are handy to have, and I put mine to good use. I saw the ship slowly moving forward as its anchor chain was retracted, the water that clung to the chain falling back. I watched the tugs move into position, one at the bow and one at the stern. I saw deckhands drop small ropes to the deck of the tugs where they were tied to much larger ropes which were then winched back up and secured. (This was a new discovery, as I had always assumed that the larger ship supplied the tow line.) I saw the much larger tow line climbing upwards to the Opal's bow. The tugs did their thing. We waited until the tugs and ship had come even with us, then off we sped to the fishing pier to get the better view. It wasn't until I had walked almost to the end of the pier that I saw another ship coming from the other way. It was the Kinsman Independent, freshly loaded with wheat bound for flour mills in Buffalo. The Opal had been waiting for the Independent's berth at Harvest States so she could load a cargo of spring wheat to take to Venezuela. We were in the perfect place to see the two ships as they came abreast and passed each other. As we stood at piers end watching the Opal to the left (port) and the Independent to the right (starboard), the tugs Vermont (at the bow) and Kansas (at the stern), had the Opal pointed directly at us. An interesting sight! They were hugging our side of the channel. The Independent passed first, then the Opal came abreast of us, the crew of the Vermont laughing and waving at the four strange people waving back. I hope I got some good photos. The red and green tugs on blue water should make great pictures.
In the past, all ships had need for assistance from the tugs, but now, many of the "lakers" are equipped with bow and stern thrusters that enable them to move sideways on their own. Thrusters produce strong jets of water from 4 foot diameter tubes built into the hull, fore and aft. The Spar Opal was a "saltie" and, as with most salties, did not have thrusters. Salties are usually foreign ships that cross the ocean, traveling on salt water, and becoming rusty in the process. You can usually identify salties at a distance because the rust on their hulls can be quite obvious. In contrast, Lakers stay on fresh water and rarely exhibit much rust. The salties that visit Duluth/Superior are usually also equipped with numerous large cranes upon their decks for loading a variety of cargoes. Lakers, on the other hand, usually have one large, 250 foot conveyor for handling bulk cargoes such as coal and taconite.
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