Ship of dreams cruises in

DAWN De BUSK/Frontiersman reporter

Cold weather, with resulting thick ice in Knik Arm, hampered last week's process of loading Mat-Su wood chips onto a commodities ship bound for a South Korean paper mill.

The captain of the ship, which had three of its six holds full, decided the sea vessel should return to Homer and wait for warmer weather before finishing the loading task, according to port director Marc Van Dongen.

"It's just a safety measure," Van Dongen said. "If the ice is too thick with the outgoing, or ebb, tide, it could cause enough pressure on tie-down lines to break one and create an emergency situation. We're trying to avoid an emergency situation. It's happened before in Nikiski and in Seward. . . we don't want it to happen here."

Besides the Korean ship captain, there are two pilots from the Alaska Ship Pilots Association, who escorted the ship to Port MacKenzie after it passed through customs in Homer last weekend.

Port MacKenzie's first guest - the South Korean ship Keoyang Majesty - arrived early Monday morning, putting to work more than 85 employees and the recently completed $8-million conveyer system with its fixed-arm loader. The new dock was completed before Christmas while the 2,500-foot-long conveyer belt, which was constructed concurrently with the dock, was done by the third week of January.

All week long, 24 hours a day, the Korean crew and Alaskan workers loaded the 725-foot bulk commodities carrier with roughly 42,000 tons of wood chips from NPI. The wood chips will be transported on a two-week journey to a paper mill in South Korea.

Creating a year-round operation, NPI's wood-chip exportation will bring eight to 10 ships a year to the port. Another smaller ship from Japan is expected in late March or early April, Van Dongen said. NPI expects this venture will continue for about 20 years.

"Each vessel that docks at Port MacKenzie generates $60,000 to be placed in the MacKenzie Port fund," Mat-Su Borough Manager John Duffy said.

The fund will supply the life blood for projects like the ferry port building, which is scheduled to begin construction this summer. That project will, in turn, create even more jobs at the once vacant and quiet port along Knik Arm.

This business endeavor "creates jobs, not only at the dockside, but for truckers, foresters and office folks who do the contracts and other paperwork," Duffy said.

"Our business has doubled," said Maria Towse, who owns Port MacKenzie General Store and Cafe.

"During the winter, when we get a lot of snow, we have snowmachiners doing business here," Towse said. "The [NPI] workers take showers, eat at the cafe and buy a few groceries. But mostly, they buy propane and fuel to get back and forth. It's great. It's so nice to see development happening. I find it exciting - not just for our business, but for everyone in the community. When people drive to the port from Anchorage and stop by the store, they say they think it's great what's going on."

The use of Port MacKenzie as a viable moneymaker has been a longtime dream of many politicians and entrepreneurs - especially those who own businesses along Knik-Goose Bay Road.

After the summer-long project of building the conveyer belt system and an 18-acre loading pad on the cliff above the dock, exporting Alaskan resources has become a reality. "An operation like this is long overdue," Van Dongen said.

The product being loaded onto the ship - Alaskan birch - was harvested this fall from 200 acres at Settlers Bay Golf Course and from a farm in the agricultural district, Van Dongen said, adding that 60 percent of the wood was from privately owned land. This winter-aged birch, from trees with a diameter of more than eight inches, were harvested from Montana Creek Road and trucked to the port.

"With the completion of a rail corridor, it will bring the cost of exports down," Van Dongen said. "Instead of going through Seward, we can export natural resources - timber, coal, limestone from Port MacKenzie. Right now, Alaska is the net importer of cement. Alaska could become a major exporter of limestone. We need the rail spur to export."

Van Dongen added that the construction of the Knik Arm bridge tops the pet-project lists of U.S. Don Young, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and Gov. Frank Murkowski.

Long-term plans aside, years of paperwork and a summer of hard labor and an autumn of timber harvesting plus a lot of last-minute preparations have given birth to last week's reality: a flurry of activity at Port MacKenzie.

Tractor-trailers pull in, dumping loads of wood chips into a pile massive enough to make bulldozers look like toys, bulldozers push wood chips toward the conveyer belt, which travels down a 45-degree cliff to the 725-foot ship.

The largest wood chip carrier in the world - a heavy, black vessel with Korean lettering and a Panamanian flag - waited stoically at Port MacKenzie while little communities of icebergs maneuvered past.

Trucks with NPI emblems drive up and down the long hill leading to the dock. Only authorized guests or employees are allowed past the security point; so, occasionally, vehicles park at the top of the hill and their passengers get out to take photos of what seems to be an historic event.

Many stepping stones led to the the arrival of a ship at Port MacKenzie. The construction of a new road on the cliff about the dock, the 18-acre loading pad and the conveyer belt system allow the port to become an economic asset to the Valley and the state, Van Dongen said.

The last-minute scramble included obtaining Federal Communications Commission licensing; providing contractual services for waste-water removal, for garbage disposal and for getting rid of old oil; receiving final Coast Guard approval; arranging a hydrological survey of the area adjacent to the dock face and hiring people for security, Duffy said.

As of Friday, three of the six holds were full of 100-percent birch wood chips harvested from Mat-Su timber during this fall and winter, Van Dongen said.

When the weather gets warmer and the Knik Arm ice becomes less dangerous, Keoyang Majesty will return to Port MacKenzie and NPI employees will finish the loading process necessary for it to get on its way to South Korea.

Duffy said the initial arrival of this first sea vessel wasn't met with great fanfare because those involved wanted to work out all the bugs beforehand."It's still a learning curve," Van Dongen said.

"What we want to do when the second ship arrives in about six weeks," said Duffy, "We want to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony."