Blessings

This will be a quick post.  We are currently in the Broughtons, at Pierre's Echo Bay Lodge & Marina.  We have limited wi-fi, so are unable to upload photos at this time.  We will update blog with photos and video as soon as we can, which may be awhile as we are pretty isolated here.  

Just this morning I was thinking how blessed we are.  We've had a beautiful trip so far, traveling safe, and meeting wonderful people.  We've had people we know cruise with us, said good-bye to them, only to have another couple we knew show up at the same place where we were, which led to a few more days of cruising with a companion boat.  Safety is certainly enhanced when traveling with another boat.  So, I'm thinking, we've seen beautiful panaromas, had encounters with a couple of pods of killer whales, had (mostly) everything work right, and we have the beauty of the Broughtons right at our fingertips.  It couldn't get any better ... right?

Well, it certainly did today.  As we were traveling Tribune Channel in the Broughtons, stopping to do some fishing, we spied 7-8 porpoises swimming around, looking like they were feeding.  We weren't catching anything, so we decided to move along.  All of a sudden there was a big splash and the porpoises were headed our way.  For the next 15 minutes, the porpoises swam in and out of our bow wake, sometimes turning sideways to look up at us as we hung over the bow.  They jumped along the side of the boat, and then ran back up to the bow again.  It was an amazing experience--one I will never forget.  Yes, we have video, which we will post to this blog when internet bandwidth allows.

Then, as we were headed to our spot for the night, a call came in over the VHF radio.  A boat, 1/2 mile behind us was in need of assistance.  We turned back to see if we could render help.  Seems a small Nordic Tug's hydraulic steering went out and they were dead in the water.  The loan of a funnel for pouring in hydraulic fluid, along with some ideas, had the boat motoring alongside us as we guided them into a safe harbor where they could get some mechanical help.  As we docked our boat alongside, they quickly came over to shake our hands and tell us what a blessing we had been to come back and help.

Blessings ... so not just the ones we've received.  Nice to pass one along!