Traveling Down “The Ditch” in Grenville Channel

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025

We arrived in Prince Rupert after our 9 hour crossing of Dixon Entrance, safe and sound. It was a relatively smooth, rolly ride. We staged in Pond Bay where we were the only boat. We could see that there were quite a few boats anchored in Foggy Bay, which is another staging area on the other side of the sound, so we knew we would not be crossing alone. During the cruise I noticed the Nordic Tug, Island Dancer come up on our AIS screen. This is the same boat we saw on our journey North over a month ago. There is a group of of six boats from the Roche Harbor Yacht Club that were traveling together to Alaska. Interestingly we were the first to arrive in Price Rupert and then the boat behind us in the picture above, LightWave came in. You will notice the Nordic Tug, Island Dancer across from the dock on the right side of the picture. When we were here on our trip north there were hardly any boats. Today, the marina was full.

We left Prince Rupert en route for Coghlin Anchorage at 5:30 this morning. Pretty uneventful save for the fact that when I turned around in the marina on our way out a local taxi boat yelled at me. I guess I held up his departure by a minute or two. Gimmie a break. We proceeded out and then he buzzed us at full throttle to make sure he waked us out. Clearly the guy has issues. Probably started with an over bearing mom but we will never know:) Anyway on with the journey.

It was a long but easy cruise. We had patchy fog throughout our journey but we also had the tide going with us so it cut about an hour off our journey. Almost the entire journey the water looked like glass, and after more than a week in the rain and wind, we were THRILLED to see the sunshine peeking through the clouds.

This is the BC ferry that passed us along the way. Pretty ferry, far more attractive than Washington State Ferries.

This is Coghlin Anchorage. We are the only boat here and keeping our 🤞 fingers crossed it will stay that way. We decided to go a couple of extra hours to this anchorage and pass up Lowe Inlet which is filled to the brim tonight with several of the boats that were with us in Prince Rupert.

Tomorrow at 5:00am the journey continues and we have another two 10+ hour cruise days ahead of us. We have been in touch the our “weather guy” Chris regarding our next crossing of Cape Caution. Right now we are hoping to make this journey this weekend (hopefully Saturday) which means some VERY long days ahead as we proceed quickly through northern BC. May “The Force”, the weather and the tides be with us!