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West Coast Cruising
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About the Authors: Jan and Don Cosby have spent 30 years boating, four of which were spent living aboard a steel Bruce Roberts designed Spray 36. They have cruised the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean, and are about to embark on another adventure. This summer, starting in late July, they will spend five weeks taking a 36’ Sabreline trawler one way from Bellingham, WA, to Juneau, AK. Since they are sailors by tradition, both the type of boat and the cruising area make for a completely new experience.

Jan has worked at Bluewater Books and Charts for 13 years now, in the chart department and behind the scenes. She provides the expertise behind Bluewater’s help e-mail system, so chances are good that anybody who has ever e-mailed Bluewater for any reason has heard from Jan.

Jim and Sue Masters are longtime friends of Jan and Don. The two couples met in 1968 at Purdue University in Indiana, and they have cruised together all over the world. Jim and Sue sailed with the Cosbys in Hawaii, the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and on the Great Circle. The Masters currently live in Centralia, WA, and own a 21’ fishing boat. They spend a great deal of time fishing in the Strait of Juan De Fuca.

This is the second installation of a series outlining the preparation for and completion of the trip. For the first installation, please see our July newsletter. Jan and Don are back in Ft. Lauderdale, and Jan was sorely missed at Bluewater. Please call Bluewater Books and Charts if you are planning a similar voyage, or if you need advice on charts and guides for any part of the world.

The Inside Passage: Lasting Impressions…Jan and Don Cosby

Cruising the Inside Passage is one of those experiences that change a person. Long after most of the details have been forgotten, the whole of the experience will exist in our minds, not so much as a distinct memory, but as an emotion, a feeling. We spent five weeks busily drawing in the images, the sounds, the smells, the feel of it, not realizing that the true essence of it was slowly creeping into our heads. We had great fun snapping and reviewing our digital photos, but only a little of it would fit into our cameras. I’m certain it won’t fit on these pages either, so we will just present a few literary and literal snapshots and hope you get something of the idea.

The Inside Passage is all about contrasts. Enormous mountains of seemingly solid rock rise up beyond little Two-Tree Island. Huge cedars and Sitka spruce tower above delicate, lacy ferns. Roaring waterfalls drown out the sound of tiny springs bubbling from the rocks. Humpback whales blow and breach and splash while incredibly small ducks quietly dive for minnows near shore. Days of bright sunshine and warm breezes were interspersed with days of heavy clouds literally "on the deck". We enjoyed a long soak in Bishop Hot Springs’ 102 degree pool and had a nice swim in Bailey Bay‘s 60 degree saltwater, but the water between the icebergs in Tracy Arm was an uninviting 32 degrees.

Prince Rupert, Ketchikan, and Juneau each had clusters of massive cruise ships vying for the available dock space. But only a few miles away we anchored alone in quiet, pristine coves. Deep inside the Behm Canal we saw only an occasional commercial fishing vessel, but in the mountainous "Punch Bowl" of Rudyerd Bay in less than five minutes we counted 11 float planes buzzing overhead carrying cruise ship passengers from the docks in Ketchikan. The Northwest remains largely unspoiled only because it is just too big to be completely overrun. Fortunately, the cruise ships stick to the main channels on their way from one movie-set-style shopping destination to the next. (It is our guess that a typical cruise ship cruiser is exposed to a hundred or more diamond shops on just one cruise.) Needless to say, we did not spend a lot of time in town.

Nature? We saw whales, seals, otters, bald eagles, loons, porpoises, bears, deer, and more. We caught and ate salmon, crabs and shrimp. As we moved further north we saw humpback whales almost every day. In Khutzemateen Inlet we saw a group of seals clustered so close together on a drying sand bar that a cloud of steam had formed in the air above them as they lay soaking up the warmth of the sun. Otters were more rare, so it was a real treat to find them close enough to watch through binoculars. At every anchorage we searched the surrounding hills until we located the resident bald eagles. Dall porpoises jumped and played beside our bow for most of an hour as we motored north from Tracy Arm. At Anan Bay a black bear, on his way to lunch, came down the trail as we were going up the trail, but he was only interested in salmon so we got to watch him fish for a while. In Knight Inlet we were amazed to see a mature deer swimming across to the far shore, which was still several miles away.

Scenery? Several times every day there were breathtaking views at every point of the compass. Alaska was the best for that, of course, with it’s snowy peaks and glaciers. The four of us took tons of pictures, and after culling them we still have over 500.

We will break the trip down to provide more detail in future segments. Meanwhile, if you have questions you can email Jan by using the link at the top of this newsletter.

Jan and Don Cosby