I'd always been told that Red Tide is often not visible, and that it is some kind of algae bloom that collects in clams and can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning. But clearly, sometimes you CAN see red tide -- check out the pictures. I've never seen it so obvious as this, and apparently according to the locals this is what red tide looks like when it's really bad. I'm not in the mood for clams or mussels after seeing THAT, I can tell you.

We saw this as we were heading across Dixon Entrance, which is the body of water that separates Alaska from Canada. Prince Rupert is the first port south of Alaska in Canada, and where we were headed to clear customs into Canada and spend the night. The trip across Dixon Entrance and Chatham sound can be a really rough ride, as it's exposed to the Pacific Ocean, but today was looking pretty good, nice and calm, if a bit off-color.

We thought we'd have an easy ride, given how nice it was, but of course nature had a surprise for us. When we started to get within a couple hours of Prince Rupert, we started to get a fairly good 3-4 foot sea on the beam (side). This caused the boat to roll pretty heavily. In addition, we had a sudden dose of FOG.

I was forced to navigate entirely by electronics -- GPS and charts to tell me where we were, and radar to tell us what else was out there. I just had to trust the blips on the screens and hope that it all kept working well and that I was interpreting it properly. When we had just about had enough of the roll, we were able to get to a buoy where we could turn so that the winds were astern, and just about the same time, the fog lifted for the day.

Prince Rupert is a beautiful little port town with a very large set of container cranes marking the entrance. At the marina where we stayed, most of the boats were commercial fishers, and the boat ahead of us had caught on fire somehow and been badly burned. It definitely wasn't the yachty crowd, but it was a nice town. We had dinner at a nearby cafe, the best food we'd had for a while.

After spending the night in Prince Rupert, I woke up at 5am hoping to make some early progress heading south, but went back to bed when I couldn't see the end of the breakwater due to dense fog. At 9am it was just a hair better, so we headed out southward and faced a different type of fog challenge. Apparently, Prince Rupert is home to one of the most active Gilnetting fleets in BC, and the fog is definitely not stopping them. Our route south took us past a fleet of several dozen boats all with nets out.

To get past a gill-netter, you have to first find the boat, and then see if a line is coming off the back. If a line does come off the back, then you need to search a ways away from the boat to find a buoy that marks the far end of the net. It is not wise to go between a buoy and the boat. Kind of like getting between a momma bear and her cub. At least, you'll have an angry commercial fisherman cussing you out on the radio, and most likely a torn-up net tangled net in your prop or rudder and a lawsuit for negligence, with damages for replacing the net, lost fish, and lost opportunity for fishing. Doing this in dense fog and choppy water is a real challenge.

If a line does not come off the back of the boat you've spotted, then you have to figure out if the net is on the spool (in which case you're safe), or if the net is off the spool (which means this might be a drift net, where the net comes completely separate from the boat, and you have to look for two buoys nearby with a net between them).

Given that we couldn't see these guys until we were right on top of them, pretty much the only tool we had for getting through this was radar. By now, I was getting to be an expert on navigating by radar, and we came through it pretty well -- I would spot something on radar, and Laura would then look for the Buoys in the fog using the binoculars. After about an hour of this, we seemed to leave both the fog and fishing boats about the same time.

We were finally heading south in smooth, clear water.

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