A Prince of a Town

This cool looking Canadian Coast Guard ship came into port about midday.   I don't know it's purpose, but maybe Ross will know?    Oh, that's right, he doesn't read the blog!

Anyway, we really like Prince Rupert.   It's a small industrious, working town, that really is well integrated with their maritime heritage.

There are marine stores (unfortunately important for some of us), grocery stores, specialty stores, car dealerships, mechanics, construction companies, and some remarkably good restaurants.  While there is a tourism aspect to the town, it's nothing like the major cruise ship towns that dot SE Alaska.   

One of our favorite restaurants here is The Waterfront at the Crest Hotel.   It's not super fancy in keeping with the town's makeup, but the food is very good, particularly if you like Asian and Indian influenced dishes, which I do.   So, that is where we dined for dinner.

But let's back this boat up...

The weather today was simply lousy.   Cool and rain bands every hour or so all day long.  We kept wanting to go out, but the weather was unappealing.   So, it was a work day of meetings and writing for me and a chore day for Karen.    Yea!, clean laundry!   Clean boat, organized boat, etc.

Between the two of us, we got a lot done and prepared for our Thursday morning departure for Ketchikan, AK.

We had booked a reservation at the Waterfront for 1800 (6:00pm) so, about an hour ahead of that we went out for a nice walk in the drizzle.   A bit cliche, but we liked these crab pots.

We shared a Caesar salad.  Karen had the sauteed herb-crusted halibut in butter sauce over mashed potatoes with Cajun dip special, and I had the classic Indian Butter Tandoori Chicken.  We accompanied our meals with this nice Okanogan Valley Bordeaux-style blend.  Admittedly, it paired better with my dinner than Karen's.   Dessert was a wonderful English sticky-toffee-pudding.

Off to bed as we have an early (0400) start tomorrow.  Ketchikan is 84 miles away and we need to time the tides and currents, particularly through Venn Passage.   

Venn Passage is a 6-mile long narrow, windy, shallow, rock-strewn route.  It is a bit intimidating and scary the first few times through.   Passage is best done on a rising tide (so, if you doink something, you will be able to get off as the tide rises).   The red-highlighted sections of the route designate areas that are shallower than my 20' safety-depth threshold - as you can see, there are lots of red areas.

Off to bed.  Boa Noite... (for you, Kippy, Dean).