It’s over! After much fretting and worrying by John about loading and unloading the coach on the ferry, the trip turned out to be successful, without damage, but not without some loading problems. We happened to choose our reservations on the day of the month with a full moon and the lowest tide of the month, -3.2′. When we arrived at the ferry terminal the loading ramp angle was extreme and lowered about as far as it could go. John was driving the coach and was the very first vehicle to board. He
went down the steep ramp at a snail’s pace due to the wet ramp and after what seemed like several hours of creeping down the long ramp, he arrived at the entrance to the ship’s boarding door. Feeling much more relieved but still going very slowly (at the direction of the crew) John is signaled to STOP! We are going to drag the tail of the coach on the ramp. The crew brings out wooden ramps for John to drive on to raise the tail of the coach and that helps but we are still too low. Then they have John back up the coach a little so they can remove the ramps and then apparently they raise the entire boarding ramp. John is finally signaled to move forward and hooray and three cheers – the coach is fully inside the ship! John takes a deep breath, thanks the Lord that the boarding was completed safely and then walks up to the outside deck to watch Jane drive the car aboard.
Our ferry was the M/V (motor vessel) Matanuska which was built in 1963 under contract to the State of Alaska and then lengthened and renovated in 1978. She is an old girl but very well maintained and clean. Actually nicer than a 1970s vintage Greek cruise ship we were on a few years ago (never again!) We chose a three-berth cabin with private bath and shower – John figured that with a three-berth cabin we could use the third berth as a couch during the day which turned out to be a wise strategy since our trip was more than two days and we like our privacy sometimes.
We left Haines at 9 AM on Thursday and didn’t arrive at Prince Rupert until 12 noon that Saturday. We were scheduled to arrive at 11 AM but sometime during Friday night or early Saturday morning our ship went to assist a boat that had run aground on some rocks and tried to pull them off. For whatever reason they did not pull the other boat off but stood by while the Coast Guard dispatched a nearby patrol vessel. The total distance we covered was only about 300 miles from Haines to Prince Rupert but we stopped at: Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, Ketchikan and finally Prince Rupert. Most of the stops were very brief, some were in the middle of the night, and most of the ferry terminals are not particularly handy to the city centers.
We have done some re-provisioning here in Prince Rupert since we had to eat down our refrigerated foods and shut off the coach’s refrigerator while on the ship (it is a long story why we needed to do that), and decided since the weather is crummy here like in Haines, tomorrow we will head East towards Jasper, then South towards Banff and then on the good old Lower 48 USA. We have another service appointment at the Winnebago factory in Forest City, Iowa to get a few more things squared away (mostly minor), then we are headed to Texas (Lord willing!)