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Old 07-19-2014, 08:58 PM   #89
BandB
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City: Fort Lauderdale. Florida, USA
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 21,449
Quote:
Originally Posted by sunchaser View Post
Congratulations on a well executed trip. You planned it well and saw some wonderful things. Rather than asking TF members for advice, you should be giving it. Again, well done.
No. Can always use more advice. Certainly many here who knew Alaska and we'd never been there. Same reason we had a local Pilot/Captain accompany and advise us. He was invaluable in knowing what he did. 95% of the time he made no difference but other times his advice, his contacts, made things better. Looking for an anchorage near Glacier Bay and Active Captain has them but locals know which ones are likely to be full and which aren't. Knowing the best way to see Glacier Bay, a good plan of cruising inside for the day. Other places his relationships with dockmasters or fuel companies. And on the long crossings such as Kodiak to Sitka and Sitka to Port Angeles it was nice to have a lot of licensed captains aboard to take the helm, to navigate, to watch. None of us ever got tired or felt short of rest.

As to places to see, Trip Advisor was a great resource as were local tourist or city web sites. We may never get back to Alaska or, if we do, it may be years or decades, so we tried to fully enjoy it. It's a world removed from anyplace we'd ever been on land or water. We had a couple more stop and go places, especially two in Canada on our way to Ketchikan. But didn't see much, just stopped around 10 pm and left by 5 am.

Most would not make the trip as we did. But mainly we just wanted to point out all the great places we found to explore and enjoy. Every place you cruise is special in it's own way. We also love to learn new things, history and culture, see the art of locales and people. When you live 4,000 miles away it's amazing how little you know about an area. By water it's almost 6,000 nm. Not like we're going to get home and then decide to make a weekend cruise here. People everywhere were so nice and helpful. Fortunately our guests who flew in had no real problems getting to us. Long flights but things went well. We also loved our mixture of eating as we normally do on board and trying the specialties of the house in the restaurants we tried. Generally we sampled one in each town. Sometimes lunch or snacks in others. What we should have done is carried a pedometer. No telling how many miles we walked. And we even found the chance to play basketball and tennis for exercise twice during the trip. Both times basketball in a high school gym and tennis on the local court (and I do mean that singular). People thought it hilarious that we wanted either but were always happy to help those crazy people. What's better than a pick up game of basketball with local high school boys who have no idea before hand what a shooter my wife is.

Admittedly we weren't in a Trawler, but we were definitely trawlering (even if at a greater speed than most) and seeing and experiencing as trawler owners do. Oh and got to know some great Ferry captains too. Followed a couple for hours along the way but only after asking if they minded. Amazing how they clear the way. Saw very few pleasure boats most of the time. Our Captain did manage to find people in many places to go fishing with and enjoyed that. Oh and we added enough sea time to upgrade both of our licenses.

Memories we can keep forever.
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