The American Spirit on the Detroit River

It is not often that I see a ship again.  This time it happened to work out that I would see the American Spirit on the Detroit River yesterday.  I took yesterday off in the hopes that I would get to some boatwatching.  Instead I spent it doing laundry and recovering from the weekend.   When I looked at ais.boatnerd.com, I saw that most of the ships had passed by but then I saw that the American Spirit was coming downbound.

After waffling long enough, it turned out that I would have to go down to Wyandotte to see her.  For that I decided to stop at Bishop Park.  It looked like the best spot for boatwatching but not as good as I'm used to.  As can see from the above picture there is an island to one side of the park.  That obstructed my view of the ships coming downbound.

But I waited patiently and watched as the ship passed the island.

Finally my patience paid off and I got a nice view of the ship.

I decided to put my longer lens on my camera to get some closer shots.  Sadly, I wish it were a little later so I could take advantage of what is called the "Golden Light".

Another long shot of the ship.

As she is passing by.

Just trying to get the boom in the picture.

Another attempt at a closeup but she was too far away for too much of a closeup.

She passes further out of view.

One last attempt at a closeup.

One last attempt at a long shot.

There is an island to the other side of the park, so it doesn't give much time for boatwatching.

And the ship almost passes out of view.  Despite the short time of boatwatching, it was pretty cool to see a ship that I saw on Lake Superior on the day before.  Now I know that it takes approximately 30 hours for a ship to get from Whitefish Bay to Detroit (or vice versa approximately).  This lends itself to another project I'd like to try where I get pictures of ships at different points on the Lakes.