Heading home

We are leaving Prince Rupert, B.C. today and heading down Grenville Channel. If the rain lets up, that long slog will be relieved by lots of great scenery. We ultimately stayed in Wrangell for four days (due to--guess what--more weather delays). We enjoyed being temporary Wrangellites: taking a walk to a park with a trail through the muskeg, swimming at the community pool, a very good pizza from the bar near the marina and a movie at the community center. We had a good transit through Wrangell narrows to Meyers Chuck and the next morning we left at 4:30 for Ketchikan. We stayed one night there and then set out to cross Dixon Entrance at 3:45 a.m. We enjoyed calm weather for the first three hours or so, with the biggest challenge coming from dodging cruise ships. They are actually very courteous and a chat on the VHS lets us know what do to avoid being crushed! Unfortunately, the wind and seas built and we had to reroute to Foggy Bay. We were greeted there by a small humpback in the NARROWEST part of a rather tricky entrance; he or she must have dived under the boat to get out of our way. Taking a deep breath, we traveled on a few hundred yards where I spyed some other obstruction not on our chart--it turned out to be three deer, swimming across the channel! The trip from Foggy Bay to Prince Rupert the following day was fine. We successfully dodged all of the gilnetters and much more confidently negotiated Venn passage, the rather labyrinthine back door to Prince R, since it was our second time. Hope you are all well and getting some summer weather--we did go without long johns on our walk yesterday evening!