Arriving in Prince Rupert: Blessing and a curse

June 15th, 2023

My dear departed father in law loved to start a boating story with the words, “I have a tale of woe to tell.” Every boater immediately perks up to words like this for two reasons: morbid curiosity and fear —a fear that this could have been me. Now that I have your attention. Here is what happened today.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning at Lowe Inlet. Pretty cove but with bad press that goes like this,” nice spot, average to poor anchorage. Anchor in front of the falls unless wind is present then you may be in a bad position. Better to anchor deep, like really deep with around 150 to 200 feet of chain, but wait, you only have 300 feet of chain so I guess that won’t work. Hmm, may the wind and the waves be with you.” You get the “drift,” not exactly encouraging tips on anchoring in this cove. So I did what I’m sure many have done, sleep a sleepless night. Morning arrived. We were not on the rocks. No bear sightings were present as promised (boo) so it was time to pull up our anchor and head on for the next long cruise—7 hours—to Prince Rupert.

Almost as soon as we rounded the corner out of Lowe Inlet we encountered lumpy, 1.5 foot waves with about 6 knots of wind, 8 of gust. The good news is that wind was behind us so we received both lift and a bit of comfort. But this condition followed us throughout the journey. Seven hours of cruising, lumpy, lumpy, wavy, wavy, wavy, and for Greg, anxiety—is this going to be worse around the corner. Fortunately it wasn’t until we arrived in Prince Rupert.

The wind and waves were picking up considerably as we entered the marina. We were low on fuel and I decided it was a good idea to fuel up. (I didn’t completely fill up because fuel in Canada is considerably more expensive than in the States. Better to wait for Ketchikan—assuming I make it there). It was a long linear gas dock but the wind and waves were strong. After a considerable amount of hard right and left rudder maneuvers, and thrusting, we stuck—finally—to the dock. I needed around 100 gallons. Canada is in liters. Between Marlene, myself, and the guy on the dock we came up with 3 different conversions from gallons to liters. We finally figured it out and I filed up. Next was our slip assignment.

“Greg we already received our slip assignment and you are not going to like it.” After seven hours of a stressful cruise these are the words from my loving wife I really didn’t want to hear.

“What’s up?”

“You have to back in to the slip.”

“I hate backing into slips. I’m not good at it. No, I suck at it. I don’t want to do it. Tell him I want to go bow in Starboard tie.”

“Greg, that’s not available. It’s stern in starboard tie.”

“S**t.”

I thrusted out from the dock with strong wind, current, and building waves. I started my turn back in to the slip and my bow thruster crapped out. Nada, nothing. All I had was my rudder and my stern thruster.

“Greg, you have to back in. You can do it.”

As I backed in Marlene let the dock hand know that our bow thruster was out and that we had a single screw (meaning single engine). And so I backed in with great help from Kevin, the dock master and a bit of good fortune. As my friend Jeff Gleckler would say, “no splinters, no sparks, all is well.”

We are now tied up at the dock. The winds are roaring, the docks are waving and we are down one bow thruster and one depth sounder. (See depth sounder reading below).

For now we are happy, secure, and just in need of a good night’s rest without another 4 am departure. It raining hard against our boat but the sound is rather soothing. We had a wonderful dinner at the local pub with great food and a bottle of wine. I think we are feeling better, but it may just be the wine talking:). Stay tuned.