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LEIF ENGER: Well past dark, a tugboat bobs around the prow of the Okolchitsa, a 600-foot freighter looming beside Duluth's dockside elevators, set to embark for Italy with 15,000 tons of spring wheat. It's pouring. Rain hammers, the decks and hatch covers. It sweeps like a blizzard across the spotlight shining up from the tug. A cable stretches tight. And the Okolchitsa groans away from the dock.

DON WILKIE: Port 10.

SPEAKER 1: Port 10.

LEIF ENGER: American pilot Don Wilkie stands firmly in charge on the bridge deck. Wilkie knows the shallows of the harbor, the shoals of Superior, and the best anchorages should one of the lake's famous gales blow in.

DON WILKIE: The ocean captains come in here. If they're here for the first time, these are small inland lakes. And there's never any seas. And it's amazing because they come here in November and December. And I've had a couple of captains tell me, these aren't lakes. These are seas.

LEIF ENGER: The bridge deck is dark for night travel, lit only by green glowing instrument screens and radar. With the Okolchitsa screws turning, the tugboat disconnects and peels away toward the city.

SPEAKER 2: All right then. Thanks again there, Don. We'll talk to you.

DON WILKIE: OK, real good. You take care.

LEIF ENGER: Straight ahead, the Duluth lift bridge climbs its cables, opening a monstrous square portal to the world. At daybreak, the Okolchitsa slides through lake fog at 14 nautical miles per hour. In 40 years, many thousands of oceangoing vessels have made this trip. 2 billion metric tons of cargo have come and gone.

IVAN DOBREV: We were here at 10:00. So we are now almost here. This is the position.

LEIF ENGER: But Ivan Dobrev, the young third mate standing over a chart, isn't thinking of history. This is his first trip down the St. Lawrence Seaway. He admits to a starry preoccupation with North American glitter.

IVAN DOBREV: The best thing in Toronto is that skyscrapers, beautiful gardens. You see people jogging, skating. And this is my first port where I saw the Canadian and American style of life.

LEIF ENGER: It's the strange algebra of shipping that a crew of Bulgarians carries wheat raised by North Dakotans to waiting Italian bakeries. Before loading in Duluth, the Okolchitsa discharged sugar in New Brunswick and phosphate in Amsterdam. The voyage will last eight months.

On deck, sparrows glean a meal from grains spilled during loading. They've pretty much got the place to themselves. Early ships on the St. Lawrence had large crews. But it takes only 22 sailors to run the Okolchitsa-- a few engineers to mind the 12,000-horse diesel, three officers to navigate, two cooks, two stewards, and a handful of able-bodied seamen, or ABs.

While technology changes, ABs do what ABs have done since Robert Louis Stevenson went to sea-- haul anchor lines, turn winches, swab the deck. Now, the hauling and winching get the help of powerful engines. And swabbing is done by three ABs wrestling a sparrow, scattering high-powered hose, washing the spilled wheat overboard.

DIMITAR HRISTOV: I am one of the luckiest men because I work for this company. There are many people fit for working for shipping. But they have no chance.

LEIF ENGER: Dimitar Hristov is the Okolchitsa's only AB with much English. And he's anxious to practice. He says shipping is one of the few stable elements in Bulgaria's ruinous economy. The fall of socialism brought democracy, but so far, no prosperity. Many of his friends have emigrated to Belgium, France, England. Only days ago, he says, a shipmate got off the boat in Toronto and refused to get back on.

DIMITAR HRISTOV: The first time, when I was in a boat, most wonderful. We were in Holland, in Greece, and Turkey. It was wonderful.

LEIF ENGER: Stefan Haralampo, the chief steward, stands in a claustrophobic kitchen under the bridge deck. He's making the captain's usual cup of unfiltered coffee-- 5 ounces of water, three tablespoons of pulverized Brazilian beans, and two of sugar. Stefan wears a pressed white shirt, black pants, and the look of a man who has outlived his first love.

STEFAN HARALAMPO: It's hard to be alone when you know that the kids and family and wife is far away from here.

PAT SAJAK: Event is the category. We drew numbers before the show to see who starts. Chris, it's going to be you. Good luck.

LEIF ENGER: In the ship's mess, four sailors eye the TV while forking down wodges of fried eggs with fresh red peppers and feta cheese. It's a tribute to Vanna White's appeal that none of them speak English. While ships' crews have shrunk, many Duluthians are unaware that some 2,000 foreign sailors still enter their harbor each season. American pilot Don Wilkie calls the seaway an under-noticed world bazaar.

DON WILKIE: It's funny. When I started here, the Soviet Union was still intact. And I would go aboard a Soviet ship. And they would all be wearing uniforms and all their medals. And they didn't really want to talk about anything that was political. But then after the Soviet Union broke up, they were all wearing sweatpants and flip-flops and really interested in talking politics.

LEIF ENGER: Down the hall, Dimitar Hristov rests in his cabin between shifts, a few carefully chosen books on a small desk under a lamp. Hristov, who is learning helmsmanship, reads maritime science, American novels, and the Bible, which he has come to rely on to ease the long months apart from his wife.

DIMITAR HRISTOV: When your life began to flow in this direction, there is great, great difficulties to change your occupation. You see, it seems like a doom to be a sailor.

LEIF ENGER: Hristov is grateful for his job, but questions whether escaping poverty is worth the price sailors have paid for centuries-- the loss of closeness with those at home. Married just two years, Hristov says he and his wife are now considering whether they, like his departed shipmate, are brave enough to leave their families and Bulgaria behind.

DIMITAR HRISTOV: Her last opinion was, let's get out from here, and to look for our luck anywhere in the world because we are younger people. And this is the time when we should live a good life and should love each other, but not from 1,000 miles.

SPEAKER 3: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

LEIF ENGER: By nightfall, the east end of Superior looms. Pilot Don Wilkie has brought the Okolchitsa to the head of the St. Mary's River and is ready to get off, an operation for which the ship doesn't even stop. A small pilot boat now roars alongside the Okolchitsa at about 7 knots. Wilkie swings himself off the rain-slicked deck and over the side. The launch heaves below. But Wilkie climbs down a rope ladder as if it were a set of stairs downtown.

DON WILKIE: See you later. Have a good trip.

LEIF ENGER: As Wilkie departs, a new pilot climbs aboard. He'll guide the ship through Sault Ste. Marie, now just a distant clutch of lights, and down the St. Mary's River to Lake Huron. It's past midnight. Dimitar Hristov is taking a turn at the helm. Stefan appears, holding a cup of coffee, looking out at the next set of lights the Okolchitsa will leave behind. This is Leif Enger, Minnesota Public Radio.

DIMITAR HRISTOV: Dead slow ahead.

SPEAKER 4: Dead slow ahead.