Day 15 - Moored in Prince Rupert

Another exciting day in the rainforest. It has been raining since I became aware that I was awake this morning at 6:30am. It has not stopped. Am guessing 2”-3” of rain today or more, have no idea on these things but it’s a lot of rain. We had Shannon, David, and Cathy over for breakfast at 7:30am this morning to say farewell to Cathy as she left today. I made crab eggs benedict and turned out pretty good, such a treat to have fresh crab to use for this purpose. Today was laundry and shopping day for me. Shannon and I took a cab uptown to Safeway for a few things since the last grocery store was Campbell River 10 days ago, and we were running low on fresh stuff. About a month ago before we left I bought 4 waterproof insulated shopping bags (Amazon) that zipped and when they arrived John gave me the (famous) Madden side eye glance (Jen and Ash know this one) and said “do you really need more shopping totes?” and I said “YES, these are waterproof”. I proceeded to then tell Shannon about them and told her that she should also get some and she said “I don’t need that.” Well – I bought them because of a day just like today – hauling groceries down the dock in torrential rain so I am VINDICATED! HA, proved you both wrong. Anyway, today’s excitement was that our boat was nearly crushed by a giant fishing trawler that lost control of his vessel when backing out of the slip behind us. He apparently got caught in the current then couldn’t recover. There was a small Grand Banks behind us that was also in his path. The trawler then used the throttle and thruster in big bursts to try and get away from our boats but just couldn’t get control. John had to rush out and get our Boston Whaler tender (that was tied off to the port side of the boat) untethered and quickly moved forward out of the path of the trawler while I ran outside in socks and no jacket in the torrential rain to hold fenders down and brace for impact. We were luckily JUST spared but the boat behind us had his railing ripped out by the trawler’s gunwale. I think I may have yelled some profanities that made the young crew on the fishing boat blush, but it was a very stressful situation. At one point the trawler gunned his throttle causing a wash on the whaler making it surge forward and nearly crash into our friends’ boat moored ahead of us. The reality is we couldn’t have fended off this vessel if it came at us hard, it was enormous and we’d have been irreparably crushed. Was super upsetting to wait for impact. Today’s other casualty of comparatively no significance is that our DIRECTV dish seems to have stopped working. We rarely watch TV at all even at home, but occasionally on a rainy day like today it’s nice to tune in, or catch the news once in a while. So now John has the oven and the TV dish to fix. We hope that is all as we are only 2 weeks into our 3 month trip. There are 7 other vessels moored here that are also heading to Alaska and we are heading up to the Breaker’s Pub at 5:30 tonight to go meet them and get acquainted before we go out to dinner with Shannon and David. Tonight we actually have a reservation at a sushi place so won’t have to eat pub food for dinner and since I now only have a cooktop to work with I have to change up my meal plans. Tomorrow morning we are planning to cross Dixon Entrance, the last of the straits for a while. Hoping for calm and following seas. Added some pictures of some of the sights underway from this past week.