Full Steam Ahead!

If every day was perfect, how would you expand your experience?

Yesterday was great, sunny skies, running with the wind and tide. We anchored in a spot that isn’t even in the books, just north of the border, our last full day in Alaska (N 54 degrees 44.303’ W 130 degrees 41.095’). A saltwater lagoon, a bit of a deep anchorage, 76 to 96 feet counting the 20 foot tidal exchange. Caught a couple of halibut right in the anchorage. Woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Dalls Porpoise surfacing in the channel. Beautiful, the grandeur of Alaska is overwhelming.

The morning broke not quite so bright. Fog, fog, fog. The weather report included a disturbance moving in with high winds for the afternoon and possible thunderstorms for the late morning. Do you sit and wait it out or do you stick your nose out and see what is happening. We still needed to cross Portland Canal which is part of Dixon Entrance, a big crossing.

I have been practicing for a big crossing in the fog for a long time, all the while hoping I would not ever need to do it. This is a lot like SCUBA diving, especially in low or no visibility. You need to know and trust your instruments. So, instead of risking losing one or two days waiting for the weather, we headed out into the big water. Eyes on the RADAR and the chartplotter. The visibility was about ¼ mile and within 20 minutes it got bad. After another 20 minutes I was adjusting and feeling a little more comfortable. I could see the little cells of rain and waves on the RADAR as we passed through. The sea state was about a two foot chop. OK.

And then the lightening started. Big bright close strikes. No place to run and hide and it doesn’t do any good to whine or run in circles. Stay the course! Damn you George Bush!

We had battened down the hatches before we left the anchorage so I couldn’t give that order but it would have been fitting. So I told Ginger that maybe she should dig out the life jackets and put together an abandon ship bag with all the necessaries. I didn’t mean to scare her but it did distract me somewhat from the dire situation at hand, watching her scurry about gathering up all our survival gear.

The lightening continued until we reached the mainland, about 1 1/2 hours. The leg from here to Prince Rupert is through a shallow and complicated, winding passage called Venn Passage. I have been saving my tracks on the GPS throughout this cruise so I was able to call up a saved track and run a reverse course on it through the passage. That was helpful but the other thing that helped was that the fog finally lifted. Wow! What a difference a little visibility makes!

It actually turned out to be quite a nice day in Rainy Rupert. 1432nm. Cleared Canadian Customs.