Dear Chubby fans,

After 18 days of continuously moving northward, we finally had to lay over for a day in Prince Rupert due to weather. The little storm front that was threatening on Friday and prompted us to make the 78-mile run for Prince Rupert finally arrived this morning just as my alarm went off at 4:45 am. We were set to catch the beginning of the ebb at 5:15 in order to get a favorable current going out the narrow and intricate Venn Passage. Venn is a shortcut for small vessels leaving Prince Rupert heading north and saves a 15-mile detour to the south out the main shipping channel. The problem with Venn is that it is twisty, only 200 feet in places, and studded with rocks and shifting sand bars. The passage is marked by a dozen or so buoys and range lights. Though it's second nature to the locals, I considered the passage as a serious undertaking. So, when I stuck my head out the hatch in the first dawn light and saw a thick fog laying on glassy calm water, my carefully timed departure unraveled. Without being able to see the channel markers and ranges, there was no way I was even going to try. I closed the hatch and rolled back under the sleeping bag. At 8:30 I was awakened by the shrill slap of the halyards on the mast, a common sound in the Berkeley Marina on a summer afternoon, but rare on the Inside Passage. It meant 20 kts of wind or more. So the much heralded front finally arrived. If it blows through by this afternoon, I can still leave at 5 pm on the next ebb and make twenty miles northward by dark. Fortunately for me, the ebb flow in the Venn starts an hour prior to high water at Prince Rupert, just two miles across the channel. This will give me an extra hour of daylight to find an anchorage tonight.

So that's the long explanation for why I have a little time to write this e-mail today. The timing exercise with the Venn is a typical example of what goes into a day's planning. With Chubby's maximum motoring speed of 5.2 knots, she can't really battle serious tidal currents which can often match or exceed her best efforts. Therefore, the sailing plans for each coming day revolve around timing the tides and currents so that the currents help rather than hinder. This is critical for conserving gas on the passages where fuel supplies are few and far between. Of course on a long passage like the 18-hour affair on Friday, one goes through 3 tidal changes so avoiding a foul current becomes impossible. It that case we had the luxury of three fuel docks waiting for us at the end of the day, so, I just cranked up the throttle, burned gas, and forced the issue. For an hour or so in the Grennville narrows, we were making 1 knot northward on full throttle and dodging swarms of logs that were heading south at 5 knots.

So, with a Sunday morning of enforced leisure, I headed downtown to the museum of native culture. A week ago I had missed the museum in Bella Coola because it was closed Saturdays. Now was a chance to catch up a little on the cultural history of the region. What always impresses me when visiting such a museum are the intricate skills, designs, and engineering that are expressed in the artifacts...the baskets in particular. The baskets woven primarily from cedar bark and grasses were amazing in their delicacy and elegant esthetic. The other element that seems to be universally present is the constant warfare among tribes for control of the resources, in particular the salmon runs. The pre-European history of the area seems to be one of endless displacement and replacement of one tribe by its rival. Today the same battle over resources is still being fought, but rather than with bows, arrows and stone clubs, it is being waged with lawyers and legislators in the courts and parliaments. There is a world lost, though, among the endless fighting, and that is the natural splendor of the old growth timber and the outlandish wealth of sea life, of which only hints remain. The old photos of salmon and halibut from the turn of the century show a different size of creature altogether. Salmon taller than the men holding them, halibut 8 feet or longer. The size of the native halibut hooks preserved in the museum attest to these lost giants. The hooks are 12 to 14 inches across. Today's halibut would not know which end of these ancient hooks to start nibbling on. The monsters of yore apparently had no problem gulping them whole.

Well, folks, it doesn't appear that the rain is going to let up any time soon, so I'm going leave the warm, cheery ambiance of this internet cafe and wander back down to the dock and the soggy confines of Chubby's cramped and cluttered cabin to plot our escape to Alaska.

Love...Bill