I like the idea of traveling with an experienced boat and perhaps others from say Seattle or Vancouver to explore Alaska. It would be nice socially as well as safety and knowing the best spots.
Have these occurred?
NW Explorations in Bellingham also does flotillas to SE AK, but with boats chartered from them, mostly Grand Banks.
Bow
The greater reward for us on our first trip was to, on our own, do the necessary leg work for route planning, charts, spare parts, fuel planning etc. This of course requires one to have a well setup boat and above average skills.
If no boat spend the money and do the NW Explorations trip as Ken suggests. Doing it this way on a well found boat provides the opportunity to better assess what kind of boat you may want to purchase. My gripe with flotillas is the group is tied to the slowest vessel and/or possibly suffering from poor maintenance and skittish owners.
Bow
The greater reward for us on our first trip was to, on our own, do the necessary leg work for route planning, charts, spare parts, fuel planning etc. This of course requires one to have a well setup boat and above average skills.
If no boat spend the money and do the NW Explorations trip as Ken suggests. Doing it this way on a well found boat provides the opportunity to better assess what kind of boat you may want to purchase. My gripe with flotillas is the group is tied to the slowest vessel and/or possibly suffering from poor maintenance and skittish owners. NWE gets around this problem.
Regarding the questions of flotilla cruising, I wrote an article for Latitudes & Attitudes magazine (back when it was Cruising Outpost) about our 2015 trip. In it, I address some of the issues being discussed in this thread. But for anyone interested in being in a flotilla, this should give you a good idea of what it's like.