As Duluth's winds subsided today, the BBC Amazon received its cargo of 40 massive wind turbine blades at the Clure Marine Terminal.
The fiberglass blades are each 40.3 meters (132 feet) long and weigh 12,743 pounds apiece. Stiff winds gusting up to 40 mph Monday forced longshoremen to postpone loading the ship until today.
Crews at Lake Superior Warehousing Co. began helping to load the ship at 8 a.m. The blades, manufactured by LM Glasfiber in Grand Forks, N.D., arrived shipside via semi-trailer truck, and then were hoisted by crane into the holds of the BBC Amazon. Twenty-six of the blades will be nested inside the vessel's hull, and the remaining 14 will make the trip from Duluth to their final destination -- a wind farm in Coquimbo, Chile -- on custom racks installed above deck.
Loading the ship will likely require 12 to 14 hours of work, and the vessel could set sail late this evening or early Wednesday.
The departure of the BBC Amazon will mark the first movement of wind power cargo into or out of the port this season.
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"Projects haven't been canceled, but they have been delayed," said Jason Paulson, operations manager for Lake Superior Warehousing. He explained that constrained credit markets have made it difficult for prospective wind farm developers to finance projects.
"Everything has been in flux due to the credit market," Paulson said, noting that there's a lot of pent-up demand that could be unleashed in the third quarter of this year, if those markets loosen up.
Last shipping season, the Twin Ports handled 302,000 freight tons of wind equipment in the form of more than 2,000 components.
But Ron Johnson, trade development director for the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, said that with the slow start this year "I don't think we'll see anything like our 2007 or 2008 numbers."
He remains optimistic, however, about the long-term outlook for wind power cargoes.
"We're certainly hoping that projects will start moving again soon, so more equipment will start moving before the end of the season," he said.
The fiberglass blades are each 40.3 meters (132 feet) long and weigh 12,743 pounds apiece. Stiff winds gusting up to 40 mph Monday forced longshoremen to postpone loading the ship until today.
