KELP PASSAGE (July 5)

How nice to force ourselves to sleep in today. And how nice to wake up and see a blue sky with bright sunshine! It was a beautiful morning, so it called for an extra cup of coffee and an omelet.

East Inlet

We took our time getting ready to go, but, even then, left earlier than we had planned. It was so nice to see all of the snow-capped peaks in sun. We probably passed miles and miles of similar scenery the past few days, but just didn’t know it because it was all covered in clouds. We commented that the sun made such a difference, not only in the view, but on one’s outlook.

We continued to see incredible waterfalls as we cruised north along the Grenville Channel. This channel is pretty straight shot for almost 50 miles, so some cruisers call it “the ditch.” We find this interesting, as most everywhere we have cruised, East Coast and West, there has been some sort of straight channel that gets referred to as “the ditch.” All of them, up to this point, have had some semblance to a ditch, being narrow, shallow and/or not very scenic, but not this one! How could you call a waterway a mile wide, a thousand feet deep, lined by forested, 7000 ft. snow-covered peaks a ditch?

As we were approaching the north end of this channel we briefly saw three Orcas nearby - surprised that Orcas were this far north. Unfortunately, Siri was not available (she has taken the last few days off) to answer our questions about Orcas.

We had talked about making a decision to continue on to Prince Rupert today, but, considering the late start and that we would have to cross the Chatham Channel as the afternoon wind was coming up, we decided to anchor out behind Lewis Island in an area known as Kelp Passage. It is not all that protected from the afternoon northwest wind, so is just a bit choppy, but the wind should die down this evening and is forecast to clock around to the south, making for nice smooth water tonight.

A view out our "front window"

Elaine is making pizza for dinner - she made dough the other night for empanadas, but I, inconveniently, caught fish, so the menu was changed to fish tacos at the last minute (incredibly good!). The empanada dough is now being re-purposed into pizza dough.

We are about 20 miles from Prince Rupert, so a morning cruise, before the wind comes up, should get us there in time to see the town and pick up a few things at the grocery store. We do have to be careful what we buy, however, as we will be re-entering the United States in another day or so as we cross into Alaska. There are restrictions on what can be brought across the border (i.e fresh vegetables, meats, eggs, alcohol, etc.), so some things will just have to wait until we get in to Ketchikan…