We’ve had lovely spring weather with plenty of sunshine and highs in the 60s for the last five days as we have approached and moored in the port city of Prince Rupert, where it rains on an average of 253 days per year and annual average rainfall is about 113 in. The locals tell us that this weather is quite unusual for this place and time of year, but it’s been a most welcome blessing for us after all the rain and cold weather we’ve had over the last three months!
On Saturday afternoon, we spent some time in the fine Museum of Northern British Columbia in central Prince Rupert, which provides an excellent overview of the culture and history of the Pacific Northwest Coast, its Indigenous peoples and the settlers who came from many nations to work on the railroad and to engage in fishing, logging, and mining. Its thousands of artifacts, maps, photographs, art works, etc., are housed in a large longhouse made of cedar and are nicely displayed.
We discovered that the sailboat, Zig Zag, which we’d first encountered in Shoal Bay and then met again at the Windy Bay Watchman site on Lyell Island in Haida Gwaii, was docked right in front of Braesail, and it was nice to see Will and Kelsey again! We are heading in different directions, and we wish them the best after they experienced a VERY uncomfortable and exhausting crossing of Hecate Strait!
The deep voice of the harbor’s fog horn woke us this morning (Sunday, June 26)–oh, no–not FOG, I thought! We could scarcely see across the dock when we rose and showered, but by the time we left the boat for the highly-recommended Cowpuccino’s Coffee House in the Cow Bay area of the harbor, visibility had improved considerably (Cow Bay received its name when a dairy farmer unloaded a number of cows in the area, and the black-and-white-splotches cow theme appears on signs, benches, bollards, parking strips, etc., around the area; the coffee house has, instead of a rocking horse, a rocking cow just outside its door, and its coffee and pastries are excellent).
We attended the morning Eucharist at St. Andrew’s, the Anglican Cathedral which one reaches via a considerable hill-climb, and enjoyed chatting with some of the parishioners and the rector after the service. We rambled around the central area of the city, picked up some groceries at a very nice Safeway store, returned to the Cowpuccino for an afternoon coffee and snack (skor bars, made from cracker crumbs, toffee bits, sweetened condensed milk and chocolate chips), and are now enjoying a lovely, relaxing evening as the fog rolls in again.
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 