Oh Canada!

We made the 90 NM from Ketchikan to Prince Rupert (our first Canadian port) on August 24 in nice weather! Nice in that it wasn't raining or blowing 15 knot on the nose. It was still and foggy. The fog got thicker as we approached the Venn Passage, the narrow shortcut to Prince Rupert. As we were all squinting into the fog looking for marker buoys a large fishing boat suddenly appeared in front of us. Its unnerving when large objects which have the capacity to do a fair amount of damage to the boat sneak up closer than you'd expect they could. But we were fine. Even when David said, "Hm... the GPS doesn't seem to be working." This would be the GPS that we were relying on to keep us in the channel. Turned out he just needed to zoom in. Crisis averted.

We stayed just the night in Prince Rupert, which didn't have a lot going on. The movie theater was playing the Dukes of Hazard, but no one was particularly intrested, and we opted for playing Uno until we couldn't play Uno anymore.

Next day we spent many hours on deck in the rain motoring through the Grenville Channel, stopping to anchor for the night in Lowe Inlet with a few other boats. Mike towed me and my fishing line around for a while. Despite a number of salmon jumping near us, nothing took the bait.

The up-side to all the rain was an amazing display from dozens of waterfalls lining the steep channel sides.

Rained the next day as we motored to Klemtu, a "First Nation" village. "First Nation" is Canadian for "Native American", eh? Though we arrived after the stores and cafe had closed, and left at 6am the next day, we heard from other cruisers that had gone ashore there that it was nice, and not full of fetal alcohol syndrome like Bella Bella, another FN town. Our early departure was motivated by the fuel tanker that wanted to refuel the fuel dock we were tied up to. Of course, we could have just moved a bit out of the way... but once David's moving there's no stopping him. When David speaks of plans for the next day, saying, "We'll see how it goes. Whatever," what he really means is, "We'll leave as soon as I wake up."

Live and learn.