Yes, it’s “Foggust” indeed!

Yes, we did wear summer clothes today–after the fog lifted. Boaters often call “August” “Foggust” because heavy fogs are so common during that month.

Walt and I enjoyed a beautiful evening in Morse Cove, our final night in Alaska, dining in Braesail’s cockpit on the delicious shrimp that Mike Jones had so kindly given us in Kasaan and watching the sun burnish the trees surrounding the silent cove,

brush the sky with a few strokes of color,

and then slip away to bed behind the hills. As I walked around the deck in the gathering dusk, I enjoyed watching some lacy jellies billow about the hull by opening and closing their delicate “parachutes”

and saw about a dozen fish leaping out of the water by turns and splashing back in, sending silver-green rings running over the water’s surface. As a special treat, for the first time in our 19 weeks of boating, it was sufficiently dark and clear by midnight to allow me to see a great swath of stars as Jupiter, the brightest celestial object I could see, looked down at his glittering reflection in the cove’s water-mirror.

We woke to a white, foggy world at about 6 am, and so stayed in bed until about 6:30, when the cove was clear enough to exit safely via its occasionally narrow, shallow, rock-infested access channel. Once we were out in open water, however, we could see, and soon entered, FOGDOM and motored through it for the next five-to-six hours as we traveled to Prince Rupert, an eight-hour journey overall. We took turns standing at the helm where we have radar overlaid on our chart plotter and can sound our horn for about 10 seconds every five minutes, and peering out the side windows into the whiteness. FINALLY the fog thinned, and we were able to navigate through Venn Passage, which has a number of navigation aids to spot along the way, with a clear view. During our journey, we experienced gentle swells that rocked Braesail from side to side as if it were a cradle, but the wind never rose above about 4 kts., and so, sadly, we weren’t able to sail at all today.

We moored Braesail at the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club docks, where we stayed the last time we were here. Walt biked off to buy a SIM card for his phone (the one that was supposed to arrive in Ketchikan on Wednesday is STILL in Memphis!), enjoyed dinner at Breakers Pub, and visited with a couple we met in the afternoon who’d fought their way through today’s fog too, who have visited many of the places we’ve enjoyed, and who recommended others.

Tomorrow, Walt will play the pipe organ for morning worship at the Anglican Cathedral here (the Bishop will be presiding), and we will take care of laundry and grocery shopping in the afternoon–if we can find our way around town through the predicted fog!