Tuesday May 31st
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More From Prince Rupert
Up early this morning with my mind spinning on all the items to do today to get ready for the Dixon crossing. My three mechanical issues to deal with is a starter alarm that goes off when I run on the starboard engine, a deal that goes around the shaft that holds shaft brushes to it to connect to the bonding system is broken, it has been that way since I bought the boat but now it is not on the shaft anymore and this helps with avoiding corrosion so I want to get it fixed and lastly I managed to snap my dipstick on the starboard motor yesterday and the shaft is still stuck down the dip stick line. All good challenges to work through and at dock in Prince Rupert is a good place to sort them. I was stressing thinking how the heck am I going to check my oil now on my Starboard motor when Joshua pipes up and says – Dad, can’t you just use the dipstick from the other motor – WOW – that from a 7 year old – the thought totally slipped my mind. When he realized that he had come up with the natural solution you should have seen the pride on his face and he says “I though you were not being to smart with that one” got to love kids. It has been humbling realizing my mechanical limitations but I am enjoying learning and actually get excited about digging around in the engine room and figuring out things I can do to improve the boat.
Yesterday while I was busy snapping my dip stick Cathy went into town for groceries and met Jeanette, a very nice lady in town who has twins and when she saw Cathy with the triplets she was compelled to say hi and before Cathy knew it she was loading up the food into the car and drove it all down to the boat dock so Cathy did not have to pack the food. Cathy laughed afterwords as Jeanette drove away that there goes a hundred dollars of food – turns out we met a gem of a family and we ended up spending the rest of the day with them and finished the evening with a great swim at the rec center and a drive around town – Thanks!!!! it has been really great to meet nice people on this trip and we look forward to sharing more time tonight with their family and meet her husband Michael and see their sailboat they are prepping for a charter business.
The trip from Kumeleon cove where we anchored two nights ago was calm and beautiful with the water turning very brown from the Skeena river and in several places we had to pay close attention to the thick debris. Kumeleon cove was a peaceful anchorage and we caught 3 large crabs and the older boys and I enjoyed motoring into a reversing waterfall and shooting out through the turbulence and foam coming from below the falls.
We are narrowing in on a plan for wrapping up our adventure, at least with the family minus Caleb who I believe will stay on for the Gulf Crossing. We are going to work our way to Sitka and Granny will be coming down on the 24th weekend and the family will be flying back with her. I am hoping that several of my friends are able to break away for the trip across and depending on the weather we will go around and up to Elfin Cove or if the weather window is good head north directly from Sitka.
All for now, it is 6:00 in the morning and the fishing charters are leaving the docks and I am going to hunt down a coffee shop and a diesel shop.
Blessings from the Sundog Crew.
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