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For me, cruising is
about exploring new places. So when my friend Pat Brown invited me on
a cruise in southeast Alaska, I was leery. I’d already been on
a memorable trip there two years earlier with him aboard a lovely wooden
double-ender called Explorer, where he’d earned his reputation
as chef and raconteur extraordinaire. My dad, daughter, and I had seen
scores of breaching whales and calving glaciers, but I didn’t
particularly want to go back and see the same landscape all over again.
Brown assured me that
although the general area we’d be cruising in would be the same,
we’d be covering new ground: leaving from Sitka instead of Juneau,
heading west instead of south, and cruising aboard a different vessel
(a 65-foot sistership to Explorer named Ursa Major) accompanied
by her owner. Brown being an indisputable expert on food, boats, and
Alaska, I signed on.
I landed in Sitka
in late July to typical Alaskan drizzle and mid-50s temperatures. Brown
met me with a hearty hello and slap on the back, and we were off to
the docks. When you’re on a boat that cruises at 7 knots, every
moment counts, so after I met Capt. Ron Miller, owner Dr. Joyce Gauthier,
and mate Cami Cash, we were headed northwest, past old Sitka, where
Russia ceded Alaska to the United States in 1867.
We settled into a
leisurely 7 1/2 knots with the big diesel turning 850 rpm. At 109
tons, not much disturbs Ursa, even after we cleared Neva Strait
and Salisbury Sound and entered the notorious Gulf of Alaska. She took
the six- and eight-footers so well, I quickly fell asleep. When I awakened
we were entering Piehle Pass, an unmarked passage through scores of
rocky islets, named after a famous Sitka rumrunner. Piehl used to hang
an anchor light on one of these islets to fool the revenuers so he could
deliver his hootch. All went well until he fell asleep one night and
his boat dragged anchor. The Coast Guard spotted him and, thinking he
needed help, hailed him. Figuring he was busted, he reportedly said,
“Well, ya got me.” The Feds investigated and soon had him
in custody.
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Alaska Cruise, Part 2 > Page 1, 2,
3, 4
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