Nelvana

The cloud that dropped onto the surface of the Mississippi River hurled rain with such fury that the drops’ felled predecessors slugged shoe-topping puddles hard enough to splash more than an inch from the riverwalk‘s pavement.

From my vantage, her navigation lights were obscured and only a river bend whispered sight of her name through the fog.

Having passed, reduced to a fogged silhouette, the freighter carefully navigated the waterway through the driving rain, avoiding sandbars and the little waterborne traffic willing to risk the conditions.

She approached the bridge just 300 yards off her bow, invisible to the eye, relying on every electronic means she had to keep her course, expertly held by the helmsman in the wheelhouse.

With deadweight tonnage over 76,000, ‘hurry’ was never a part of Nelvana’s working life, and this day weather reduced her to a blind crawl, even with the current at her stern.

Her thirst for salt and open sea, and the profitable call of a distant port beckoned.