Ketchikan, Alaska to Prince Rupert, British Columbia

(Spending the night in Foggy Bay)

Day 77 August 7, 2008

We woke in Ketchikan to our first major fog of the year. John and Don went ashore to evaluate the amount of visibility, while Daleen & Diane also checked out the amount of visibility for their comfort **smile** and it was determined we would leave. As it turned out, the fog was high enough to see land at most times, with a ½ mile visibility, then in the late morning the fog lifted and we had a beautiful late morning with blue skies and a very smooth crossing arriving around noon at Foggy Bay. (Light chop for a while but mostly a mill pond)

What an afternoon in Foggy Bay. Warm calm and just nice to rest and relax on the Omega. Diane came over to visit. John took Alpha out for an afternoon row to check out a black buoy and then came back and put the sails on Alpha and enjoyed a few more hours in the bay sailing Alpha with a very light breeze with blue skies.

Around 6pm we noticed the fog moving back in towards land and thought we probably “should have” continued on toward Prince Rupert but that would have been 90 miles in one day and much too long for our crew.

IN THE MORNING…..Heading to Prince Rupert, British Columbia August 8th Day 78 (second part of Dixon Entrance Passage)

Sure enough, we woke up in Foggy Bay with soup; guess that is why they called it Foggy Bay, we could hardly see the shores in the bay. With the threat of high winds the next few days, we again evaluated the situation and decided to head on. I was a little leery at first but with GPS on Garmin and our Nobeltec on our laptop and radar, it actually wasn’t too bad. In Puget Sound area, you have to be so careful because there are so many deadheads in the water (small and huge logs floating), but in Alaska, we have seen hardly any logs in the water. In the beginning we had probably 1/8 mile visibility, the fog would get higher and then set in again. When we finally saw Green Island lighthouse, we had a couple mile visibility. Fog is something we would rather not have on the water but this crossing was not stressful and I have to admit, it was cool, being able to get across Dixon Entrance in fog and have the seas flat and totally calm. It was a mill pond all day today. Glad we chose to go.

We again arrived in Prince Rupert 10 hours later under beautiful blue skies. We traveled approx 53 mile today. It was a long day and glad to be in port. We checked into customs via our CanPass while Don and Diane also cleared customs a few minutes later. We decided to go to the store to reprovision the items we couldn’t bring into Canada, potatoes, fruits with seeds/stones (peaches, apples, etc) and returned to Omega and Saoirse around 9:30. Now if we decided to leave in the morning, Diane and I will be ready.

John and Don changed oil, regular engine maintenance and engine checks. The propane store was closed and they didn’t open on Saturday until 10am so it was a lazy kind of morning. When we woke at 6am, seems like our regular wake up time, we noticed we were in fog again, so we headed back to bed. We finally couldn’t go back to sleep and got up around 7am to find the fog gone…. Yeah!! We started our chores in preparation to leave.

We slipped lines on Omega at noon and headed to the fuel dock. We usually like to fuel when we arrived but we had to check into customs. Our cell phones don’t work in Prince Rupert which is why we were not able to check into customs by phone and stop at the fuel dock when we arrived.
Again we had smooth waters heading toward Grenville Channel.