Having done the trip from Anacortes to Ketchikan last summer on our own, I can see how people who are used to the PNW would start feeling lonely as they got further north. We didn't feel like we really got remote until we got to the Broughtons and finally felt at home when we came up the east side of Chatham Strait in SE Alaska. I think if we had the opportunity to join this group last year, we would have just for the fun. We met a lot of people on the way up and off an on we kept running into some of them in SE Alaska at different ports. Most of the nights we spent on anchor although we learned SE Alaska has a fair number of mooring buoys and state/federal docks in the middle of nowhere (Kevin, after spending 8 years running around PWS in a C-Dory, it seems we got the short end of state and federal funding compared to SE).
One thing we found missing in the Waggoner Guides were discussions about local industries. For example, going through the narrows just south of Nanaimo, the first thing you see is a large paper mill that is not mentioned. Nanaimo is way off in the distance. The references to logging as being mainly a bad thing are misleading. That is is one of the main industries in BC and if you are looking to take a hike or the dog for a walk, there is nothing better than a logging road. Whenever we saw signs of recent logging near the end of the day, we always looked for a place to anchor where we could get to the logging roads. This also holds true in SE Alaska. The forested areas are not fun to walk through and good "beaches", especially in BC were few and far between on the route we took. Maybe with a "guided" trip I would have gotten a different feel.
Tom