Our trip across Dixon Entrance was unremarkable. It got a bit choppy, but nothing the mighty Thankful couldn't handle, and after a few hours of exposure we were once again tucked into the inside passage south.
Clearing into Canada was a surreal experience. We powered up to an empty, isolated, unmanned customs dock in Prince Rupert and tied up. There on the dock at the base of the ramp was a telephone without a dial or numbers. It looked like the bat-phone. Matt gathered up our passports and the ship's papers, walked over to the phone, and lifted the handset. He listened to Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite for ten minutes before a bored Canadian civil servant somewhere in the country came on the line. She asked questions and recorded information on the boat, crew, and itinerary between yawns. After a few minutes of Q&A she gave Matt a clearance number and we were done. We cast off, hoisted the Canadian courtesy flag, and headed out.
We had no interest in spending any time in Prince Rupert. Team Thankful has had its fill of cities for a while after Ketchican. Prince Rupert looked to be pretty industrial as well with large container ships in port and trains coming and going. Our chosen destination for the day was the public floating dock in Oona Bay, twenty five miles south of Prince Rupert. The cruising guide said we could get in there, but as Matt nosed Thankful in we found the entrance channel to be too shallow and bailed out. Quick, look at the chart and find something else. How about this little cove on Gibson Island four miles away?
I'd love to know why it is called Gunboat Harbor. There is probably a good story there. In any case it turned out to be a good overnight anchorage and we had it all to ourselves.
Thankful has been in Canada a day now, but we haven't seen much of it. The fog was thick all day yesterday with visibility as low as a hundred yards at times. It only cleared for the short period we were in Prince Rupert clearing customs and again just before we dropped anchor for the night.
I don't like fog. It forces us to rely on our instruments, radar, GPS, and chart plotter, to avoid running into land, shoals, and other boats, and instruments are fallable. If the radar isn't adjusted properly or the chart is wrong, bad things can happen. I trust my eyes, but they're weren't of much use yesterday.
Yesterday I finished reading my second book of Alaskan historical fiction, "The Sea Runners", by Ivan Doig. Four Swedish indentured servants escaped from Russian held Sitka in a stolen native canoe in the middle of winter in the 1850s. The book, based on a true story, recounts their harrowing 1,200 mile voyage south to Astoria, Oregon. We've already visited many of the places described in the book, and will see more as Thankful travels south.
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