It’s an August morning in northern Wisconsin, something small-town Bayfielders dream of in the darkest months of winter. The sun shines on Lake Superior, a gentle north wind cools his 70-degree air, and the yacht- and yacht-lined City Dock is quiet. Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa placed in front of town Lakeside PavilionThey beat the drums to the accompaniment of dancers dressed in formal regalia adorned with intricate beads. Sitting behind the drummer, a few hundred yards across the bay, Viking Octantisis the largest cruise ship I have ever seen in a town of 466 inhabitants per year.
Standing 665 feet tall and accommodating 378 guests and 256 crew, this state-of-the-art $230 million expedition vessel uses the Dynamic Positioning System’s powerful thrusters, anchorless technology to Hover in place. Damage to lakebeds and seabeds. Built to cruise the Arctic, Antarctic and the Great Lakes, the vessel has an ice-hardened Polar Class 6 hull. At 77 feet wide, the slender Octantis has just six inches of room on each side to pass through the narrowest of the 16 locks, allowing the ship to float from the Atlantic Ocean to the St. She Lawrence Seaway, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Huron. You can finally enter through Lake Superior, the largest and westernmost Great Lake. Passengers disembark in fiery orange tenders as drums are beaten to honor the visitors.
This pastel Victorian town at the tip of the Bayfield Peninsula is no stranger to tourists. Every October, he draws 50,000 people to the Apple Festival. Starting point for 21 islands. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Bayfield is heaven for kayakers, sailors and environmentalists. Opinions in the town on cruise ships are divided.
“This is the beginning of the end for Bayfield,” said John Unger, an employee at Apostle Islands Marina near City Docks. “I have a feeling that in five years, cruise ships will be docking there all the time.”
Octantis will make seven stops at Bayfield this summer, the last of which will be on September 20th. Although he only has three stops scheduled for 2023, cruising on Lake Superior is gaining momentum. Octantis will join its new sister ship, Polaris, on the lake. Combined, the two offer her four itineraries on Lake Superior. This includes starting in Duluth, through the Great Lakes, down the Atlantic coast, along the east coast of Mexico, through the Panama Canal, and from the west coast of South America to Antarctica.
There is also the Hanseatic Inspiration, a brand new German 230-passenger expedition class vessel that will make a 13-day Great Lakes trip, part of which is on Lake Superior.
Julie Buckles, owner of Honest Dog Books a few blocks away from the marina, has a more muted view of the cruise ship growth. “There was a routine reaction within the community that this was automatically going to be bad,” she said, pointing to issues that environmentalists in the region have battled over the past decade. mines, airports and artisanal water bottling companies. “Viking ships have little to worry about.”
Once passengers disembark at the pavilion, wait for Robert Buffalo, Hereditary Head of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, to lead the eight on a bus tour of the tribal-owned Red Cliff Fish Company and the privately owned Copper Crow Distillery. I’m here. “In my opinion, this is a big adventure for both the City of Bayfield and the Red Cliff community.”
Marine historian Harry J. Wolfe wrote that there were once more people “sleeping in boats on the Great Lakes than on any sea in the world.” Passengers traveled extensively on Lake Superior from the mid-1800s through his 1960s. Among them was Mark his Twain, who cruised Lake Superior in 1886 and his 1895. Mary Lincoln stopped at Bayfield aboard the 60-passenger Union in 1867, two years after her husband was assassinated.
“Over the first 50 years of Bayfield, large ships used the harbor regularly,” said Neil Houck, former Assistant Chief of Interpretation and Education at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. SS Christopher Columbus, The 362-foot-long Whaleback Steamship made two stops in Bayfield in the 1890s, once with nearly 3,000 people on board. “It was a big deal,” Hawke said.
However, with the advent of automobiles and airplanes, cruising on Lake Superior lost its appeal, especially when the 500-passenger SS South American (the last steamship on the Great Lakes) retired from regular service in 1967. lost. It was just a little bit of a night liner cruising the lake. Last docked at Duluth was his 138-seater Yorktown in 2013.
But the trickle turned into a steady stream. In June, American Queen on his Voyage, the 202-passenger Ocean in his navigator he proposed a 16-day itinerary. Lake Superior is included for the first time. From late May through his September, the Vikings Octantis made his 8-day cruises 14 times, almost exclusively on Lake Superior.
Steven Burnett, Executive Director of the Great Lakes Cruise Association, headquartered in Kingston, Ontario, chartered the 30-foot Zodiac in August and has been a senior planner for cruise lines Ritz-Carlton, Hurtigruten, Scenic, Lindblad and Ponant. Showed part of 466 on Lake Superior. -Canadian coastline between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay. North Shore Known as his Inside Passage, this sparsely populated area has a craggy coastline of thick boreal forest, dotted with his billion-year-old bedrock and small artisan communities. . Barnett said three of these five companies are committed to entering Lake Superior in 2023 or 2024.
“It’s a wonderful lake,” said Mr. Barnett. “All that assets add up to make him one of the most exciting cruise destinations anywhere.”
What made you suddenly get excited about cruising this under-the-radar Midwestern lake, which averages an annual temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit and is the world’s largest freshwater lake by surface area?
“The Great Lakes have historically been poorly served by cruise ships,” Viking Chairman Torstein Hagen said in an email. It is an ideal location for expedition voyages.”
For travelers, Lake Superior offers a more accessible option in a time when international travel has been disrupted by Covid, the war in Ukraine and an increasingly volatile climate.
With 2,726 miles of shoreline spanning three states and one Canadian province, Lake Superior is bordered by five U.S. national parks, one Canadian national park, and approximately 20 state and provincial parks. Beyond its rugged beauty lies human history dating back 10,000 years, when the first Anissinaabe hunter-gatherers settled in the lake basin.
The lake’s rugged ruggedness is inviting, but stormy weather can wreak havoc on your itinerary. In late May, 30 mph southerly winds forced the Vikings to cancel an excursion to Bayfield. Her first three stops in Houghton on the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan, were also canceled due to bad weather and winds, much to the chagrin of Marilyn and Randy, who live in Frisco, Texas, and her Sandrick passengers. Ms. Sandrick grew up near Houghton and, as a girl, she watched the SS South her American, a 500-passenger steamship, pass through the city each summer.
“She’d been talking about South America a lot, so when she found out Vikings were going to Houghton, she said, ‘Book now,'” Sandrick said.
So far, they’re addicted to both the ship and the voyage.
Scandinavian-chic Octantis features an on-board spa, three indoor and outdoor pools, lounges with floor-to-ceiling windows, and staterooms twice the size of your average New York City apartment. But it’s also built for research with a 400-square-foot wet lab, a National Weather Service balloon launch station, two submarines, and a 100-foot-long spillway that can be reused for scientific exploration. launches a Dutch-built special operations warship. .
On the Great Lakes, the Vikings NOAA, Great Lakes Environmental Laboratory and the Wisconsin Department of Natural ResourcesAn onboard staff of scientists will launch a National Weather Service balloon to measure tropospheric ozone, study the increased presence of algal blooms, and sample water for microplastics. Guests can watch or, in some cases, participate as long as they like.
“I don’t think our cruise ships are doing just citizen science,” said Damon Stanwell-Smith, head of science and sustainability at Viking. “They are world-class research ships.” .”
In addition to unpredictable weather, Lake Superior presents another natural barrier to expedition cruising. It spans two countries. If the ship departs from the Canadian side, passengers must enter the U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Duluth, the first U.S. point of entry. Until very recently, the port of the hilly city of 86,000 people did not have facilities to accommodate a secure border crossing.
This summer, Duluth partnered with the Duluth Sea Routes and Ports Authority and the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center to build a temporary facility in the harbor along the seawall behind the convention center. Here, passengers can disembark and clear customs. The permanent facility is expected to be completed by 2024.
“What Duluth has done will be a game-changer for the Great Lakes cruising industry,” said Rebecca Yackley, director of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Authority’s Office of Trade and Economic Development. “Clearance facilities are currently the biggest challenge for cruising on the Great Lakes. Duluth has the only customer and border patrol facilities on Lake Superior.”
Duluth Mayor Emily Larson sees small-scale expedition cruising as a boon to her city, which has an industrial port that carries 35 million short tons of cargo annually. An expedition ship like the Octantis looks small compared to a 1,000-foot-long lake that carries taconite, salt, and iron ore.
“I’ve been to Miami. I’ve seen 4,000-passenger ships. We’re not a city chasing that market,” she said. “We are a city for her 200 to her 400 people at a time who are genuinely interested in Duluth’s geology, industry, science, freshwater, food and experience.”
In Bayfield, Ted Doherty, chairman of the Bayfield Port Commission, and other local officials, including Lynn Dominey, manager of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, spent a total of three years negotiating with the Vikings. I was. Dominey’s concerns about boats include the safety of park visitors in small craft such as yachts and kayaks, wake damage to the park’s shoreline and infrastructure, and the local authorities who provide ferry tours and other boat trips within the park. It was a corporate move.
“I have no authority over Lake Superior or Bayfield,” said Dominey. “All I can do is say, ‘These are things I care about. I have.”
To address these concerns, Viking uses already established transport canals to circumnavigate the perimeter of the park and has contracted with local tour operators such as: Apostle Islands Cruise Explore the National Lakeshore. Whether it will be enough to appease some Bayfield residents remains to be seen.
“I think it’s going very well,” Dougherty said. “If you want a grocery store open in the middle of winter in Bayfield, you have to open in the summer.”