CHAPTER

Nanaimo to Port Hardy

To Shearwater

To Khutze

To East Inlet

To Prince Rupert

To Foggy Bay

To Ketchikan, Metlakatla and Clover Bay

To Wrangell and Petersburg

To Partage, Hobart and Endicott

To Auke Bay (Juneau)

To Funter, Tenakee and Saltery Bay

To Beehive and Sitka

To Still Bay, Ship Cove and El Capitan

To the Cave and Nossuk Bay

To Craig, Soda and Elbow

To Nichols and across Dixon Entrance

Prince Rupert, Captians Cove and Ala Passage

To Klemto and Fancy Cove

To Kwakume, Fury Cove and Blenden Harbour

To Port McNeil, Neville and Gowlland

To Henry Bay,  Northwest Bay, Nanaimo and Pender Harbour

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We spent Monday night in Elbow Bay, east side of Long Island, (Cordova Bay) . Rain and some chop today . Tuesday we stayed put; it rained all day and the visibility was too low to travel. Made a pineapple-lemon slice and we had Crab Bruschetta for supper – a winner recipe!! And it was a good evening to watch a movie and play a few games of Dicey. What a life!! We woke up to better weather and finally on our last lap travelling down this big island – it was a nice sunny day and we arrived mid-afternoon at Nichol’s Bay at the southern tip of Prince of Wales Is. (Cape Chacon). We are now on our 8^th week of the journey. Norm and I went in the dinghy to see a beached prawn boat that had sunk several years ago. It had been anchored up to the beach and many prawn traps were still piled on the beach as well. Of course they were not usable but Norm, along with a few others before him, managed to find a few usable parts. Guys?? And then it was early to bed as the Captain wanted to be up and on the way shortly after 4a.m. I will never know how successful he was to get his two helpers up and going but no complaints about them when I arrived on the scene! I didn’t sign up for that kind of stuff.

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This morning we made our way over to the Yacht Club where we had stayed on our way up and there was space for our two boats to tie up beside each other. Norm and I met our good friends, Dawn and Adrian Velveal, a commercial fisherman from Parksville, while uptown shopping today. What a surprise! They invited us to have supper on their boat tomorrow – that will be a treat! They were putting in time while waiting for the Monday sockeye opening. They invited us to have supper on their boat tomorrow – that will be a treat! There are many fish boats here from all over during fish season causing a population explosion. P.R. has many nice shops and again we decided we do like it here. Well on Sat. afternoon Norm and I made our way from the one end of town to the other to find Belveals. Too far to walk but hey, we can just hop on the bus. Right? After we finally found where the bus stop was we hopped on. After awhile Norm went forward to ask the driver how far it was to the docks where we wanted to go. His response "oh, this isn’t the right bus you’re on – I will drop you off when I get to the closest point before I turn, and then you will have to wait two hours there for the right bus". - Right! We weren’t about to wait so started walking. Norm hitch hiked for awhile but no success. I don’t think his beard made a great impression on those people. Okay, now we chose just to walk and forget about hitch hiking and would you believe that a pick-up truck passed, slowed down and stopped. I ran ahead and opened the door and asked if he had stopped to give us a ride. He said "yes – I thought you two looked pretty tired". What a nice guy – it turned out he was going to the same place as we were and knew Adrian and Dawn very well. I wonder if our grand-children know just how adventuresome their old grand-parents really are? So we had a nice dinner aboard the fishing vessel "Canadian Mist" and then were given a boat ride back to "Maggie Lou" where we had tea and a nice visit with Dave and Marg. Even by water it was a long way back!.

It is sooo nice to be back in Beautiful British Columbia!