After the ferry left Ketchikan, it was a 38 hr straight through trip to Bellingham, Washington. We did not stop anywhere in Canadian waters. Again the wildlife was less than abundant; though I am sure it was lurking around somewhere we couldn’t see it. No more whales, no more orcas (Orcas although they are named Killer Whales are actually a member of the Dolphin family – I didn’t know that), just a few bald eagles and a bunch of sea gulls.
On Thursday evening we passed through the Seymour Narrows. As the name suggests this is a tight spot in the passage, but what it is really famous for is the location of Ripple Rock, or more precisely the destruction of Ripple Rock which was achieved in 1958 by the, then and now, largest ever non-nuclear human generated explosion. This ‘rock’ was always submerged by some 8 feet at low tide, but that was enough to cause many passing ships to come to grief and, at all times, the disturbances it caused in the water flow made it an extremely treacherous passage. So finally, in 1958, after taking hundreds of vessels and hundreds of lives, the Canadian Government blasted it to bits in this huge explosion that was a seismic event detected all over the continent. It was quite an engineering operation and the link is well worth checking out – it wasn’t just a few sticks of dynamite in the right place.
The blast reduced Ripple Rock to something 40 feet below the surface at low tide but its effects on the water flow can still be seen. We came through just off a slack tide but, even then, the eddies and currents looked quite nasty.
Interestingly, just adjacent to Ripple Rock on Vancouver Island is a small community, once owned by Bing Crosby – maybe that’s where he dreamed of a White Christmas and maybe even experienced one or two of them.
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