GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A big boat from Brazil will be gone soon after parking on the Fox River in downtown Green Bay for the past few days.
Dean Haen, Port of Green Bay Director, says it’s been an unusually long visit for the Wagenborg ship that first came in over the weekend.
That can be attributed to both what it’s carrying and where it came from.
“It’s carrying wood pulp from Santos, Brazil, into the region,” explains Haen. “Inside the hatches are the wood pulp and they pull them out one at a time.”
To have a ship docked this long is unusual, but the combination of its cargo and international origin are a sort of perfect storm.
“Because it’s doing things one at a time it takes a while to unload,” he says. “It also has customs and other issues that they need to work thru.”
According to port officials, the ship isn’t considered all that big for our waters.
It’s under 740-feet since it has to fit under the locks in order to reach the ocean.
While many ships that pass through the area are somewhere in the 800 to 850-foot range, they just don’t stop long enough for a lot of people to notice.
For Haen, the hope is that transportation of wood pulp becomes more commonplace via local waterways.
As of right now, it typically arrives on the coast and is then moved inland via rail.
“In this case, we’re hoping to develop a long-term market to bring it in by water,” he says.
But for now, plenty of people are enjoying the simple sightseeing that goes along with having a vessel of this size docked for a prolonged amount of time.
“It’s like urban theatre, there it sits right in downtown,” says Haen. “If there was a place to have a cocktail across the river it’d be a great place to just sit and watch them unload.”
Officials expect the boat to be on its way as early as Wednesday this week.
