The main natural and man made features encountered along this stretch of the route include: The city of Prince Rupert, Chatham Sound, Portland Inlet, the US / Canadian Border, Dixon Entrance, Cape Fox, Revillagigedo Channel, Behm Canal, and the city of Ketchikan.
My room at the Pioneer Hostel.
I woke up this morning at 5am, and carried my gear from the Pioneer Hostel, through the empty streets of Prince Rupert, down to my kayak on the dock. The sky was mostly blue with some high wispy clouds, and the wind was very light. After getting the boat packed up, I was off at 6:40am. It is advisable to leave Prince Rupert on a falling tide, and since low tide this morning was at 9am, I would have 2 hours and 20 minutes of current going my way.
Heading through Venn Passage toward Metlakatla.
My charts for the trip were printed in the 1:100,000 scale and for this area of Canada, they looked like poorly drawn cartoons, with very little pertinent information shown on them. For today’s route they provided only basic directions, and I was on my own making my way through Venn Passage which is obstructed with submerged rocks and thick kelp beds. This passage heading west out of the harbor is very shallow with only a narrow channel marked by buoys. I carefully made my way through, staying clear of boat traffic and shallow spots. Before long, I had passed Metlakatla and was entering Duncan Bay.
Thick beds of Kelp, and thousands of submerged, barnacle encrusted boulders, made paddling this section of the coast extremely troublesome.
Once I got out of the protected waters of Venn Passage, I was exposed to the wind coming off Chatham Sound from the northwest and the current was now directly opposed to my direction of travel. The thick beds of kelp and shallow boulder strewn sea bottom all seemed to conspire in making my progress as difficult as possible. By 11:20am, I had enough of fighting the elements and decided to stop for the day on a beautiful beach about two miles north of Ryan Point. I hated to stop so early in the day after traveling only 11 miles but the wind had been increasing steadily and this was the first good place to camp I had seen today. This beach turned out to be a great place to camp with clear views of Dundas, Dunira, and Melville Islands out across Chatham Sound.
My campsite north of Ryan Point near Slippery Rock and it's flashing light.
