Alaska & the Inside Passage

• Region: Inside Passage from Puget Sound and British Columbia to south-east Alaska
• Route: over 1,000 miles from Seattle to Skagway, mostly sheltered by islands
• Season: late May to early September
• Glacier Bay permit: 25 private vessel permits a day, required 1 June to 31 August, maximum stay five days
• Glacier Bay eligibility: permits are for owner-operated or bareboat-chartered vessels, commercial operations carrying paying passengers are not eligible
• Glacier Bay application: lotteries open 1 to 31 January and 1 to 15 March, with short-notice permits by daily lottery three days ahead
• Tracy Arm: over 30 miles long, about 45 miles south of Juneau, with summer ice from hand-sized to the size of a three-storey building
• Seymour Narrows: currents to 15 knots through a channel about 750 metres wide, transited at slack water
• Rainfall: Ketchikan averages 3,798 mm a year and is known as the rain capital of Alaska
• Traffic: Ketchikan handled more than 500 cruise ship calls and over 1,073,000 visitors in 2018
• Berthing: no dedicated superyacht marina in south-east Alaska, large yachts anchor or arrange commercial dock space
• Airports: Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka, with Anchorage and Seattle as the long-haul gateways

The shape of the passage

From Puget Sound the route runs north through the Salish Sea and the Strait of Georgia, up the inside of Vancouver Island through Johnstone Strait, along the British Columbia coast behind Princess Royal and Pitt Islands, and into the Alexander Archipelago of south-east Alaska. Islands shelter almost all of it. There are two or three exposed stretches where the Pacific gets in, and the rest is flat water with mountains on both sides.

That is more than 1,000 miles from end to end, and the distances are the first thing an owner has to accept. Ketchikan, the first Alaskan port, is around 600 miles north of Seattle. Juneau is another 250 beyond it. Nothing about this ground is compressed, and the boat spends real hours under way. Around 36,000 recreational vessels use the passage each year, almost all of them under 20 metres.

A week, and three weeks

A week here only works as a segment. Guests fly into Juneau, the boat takes them south to Tracy Arm and Endicott Arm for the glaciers, west through Frederick Sound for the humpbacks, and out at Sitka or Petersburg. That is a full and very good week, and it requires the yacht to have already spent two weeks getting north.

Three to four weeks is the honest figure for the whole thing, Seattle or Vancouver to Glacier Bay and back, and most owners who do it properly run the boat north with crew in May and fly guests in and out in blocks through June, July and August. A yacht that has come up from the Pacific coast of Mexico or across from Japan is already committed to a season here. This is not a ground a boat drops into for ten days.

Twenty-five permits a day for the best of it, and a tide gate that decides when the boat leaves.

Glacier Bay and the permit

Glacier Bay is the set piece, and access is rationed. Twenty-five private vessel permits are issued per day, fifteen by advance notice and ten short-notice, and a permit is required to go north of the line between Point Gustavus and Point Carolus from 1 June to 31 August. Advance permits are allocated by lottery in January and again in the first half of March, with the remainder released first-come. Short-notice permits run on a rolling daily lottery three days ahead. The maximum stay is five days.

The clause that catches owners is eligibility. Permits are for owner-operated or bareboat-chartered vessels, and a boat carrying paying passengers or operating commercially is not eligible. A yacht in commercial registry running a charter cannot simply apply. Everyone entering must complete an annual boater orientation, report in and out to Bartlett Cove by VHF, and observe the whale water restrictions on speed and course that the park issues through the season for humpbacks.

The fjords and anchorages worth the trip

Tracy Arm is the one most owners rate first. Over 30 miles of granite walls about 45 miles south of Juneau, ending at the twin Sawyer Glaciers, with floating ice ranging from hand-sized to pieces the size of a three-storey building. The ice is the limiting factor, and a yacht works in as far as the ice allows and no further. Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier next door do the same job with fewer boats.

Further south, Princess Louisa Inlet on the British Columbia coast is entered through the Malibu Rapids at slack water and ends at Chatterbox Falls, and it is worth planning a whole day around. Desolation Sound has the warmest water on the coast. The Broughton Archipelago and the Great Bear Rainforest give days of empty anchorages with bears on the shoreline. In Alaska, Baranof Island's hot springs, Red Bluff Bay and the bays off Chatham Strait are the ones crews come back to.

Where a 50 metre boat fits, and where it does not

There is no dedicated superyacht marina in south-east Alaska. Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and Petersburg all have harbours built for the commercial fishing fleet, with finger berths sized accordingly. A 50 metre yacht arranges space on a commercial or cruise-ship dock through an agent, or she anchors, and anchoring is what she does most of the time. Depths in the fjords are often too great to anchor at all close to the head, so the good spots are specific and known.

Vancouver and Seattle at the southern end are the exception, with proper marinas, deep berths and full service. Everything north of that gets progressively thinner. The yacht that works best here is one with long range, good tender capability, a strong radar picture and crew who are comfortable anchoring in 25 metres with a stern line to a tree. Air draft and beam are irrelevant. Ice, current and the absence of anywhere to tie up are the constraints.

Weather, tides and the currents

This is a rain coast. Ketchikan averages 3,798 mm a year and the whole passage is cloudy, humid and cool. Summer air temperatures sit in the mid-teens Celsius on a good day. Fog and low cloud are constant companions and floatplane schedules move accordingly. Owners should plan on being wet and be pleasantly surprised when they are not.

Tides and currents matter more than wind. Ranges of five metres and more are normal, and the water has to get through narrow passes, so gates like Seymour Narrows run to 15 knots through a channel about 750 metres wide and are transited at slack. Captain Vancouver called it one of the vilest stretches of water in the world, and even after Ripple Rock was blasted away in 1958 it dictates the day's timing. A cruise here runs on the tide tables, not the clock.

The season and what fills it

Late May to early September, and that is the whole of it. June and July are the long-daylight months, with usable light until well past ten at night in the north. August brings more settled weather in places and the salmon runs, which brings the bears down to the rivers. By mid-September the boats are heading south and the yards in Seattle and Vancouver are booked with the returning fleet.

The competition is not other yachts. It is cruise ships. Ketchikan took more than 500 cruise calls and over a million visitors in 2018, and Juneau, Skagway and Sitka carry similar loads. A yacht that plans her days around the cruise schedule sees a wholly different coast to one that does not, and any decent local agent will have the timetable.

Getting guests aboard, and what they do ashore

Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka all have airports with scheduled jet service, and Juneau is the usual guest exchange point. Anchorage and Seattle are the long-haul gateways, and the last leg is a scheduled or chartered hop. Floatplanes and helicopters are the local currency and every yacht here uses them, for glacier landings, for remote fishing and for getting a guest out when the weather closes in.

Ashore the attraction is not the towns. It is bear viewing at Pack Creek and Anan Creek, heli-hiking on the icefields, salmon and halibut fishing that is genuinely world class, and Sitka's Russian church and totem park for the one afternoon of culture. Food is fish, and the fish is superb. Nightlife is a bar in a fishing town. Guests who need a restaurant scene will be unhappy inside three days.

Fuel, support and the honest downside

Fuel is available at Ketchikan, Petersburg, Juneau and Sitka, on docks scaled for the fishing fleet, so a large uplift is arranged in advance and sometimes by barge. Provisioning at that standard means flying it in from Seattle. Technical support in south-east Alaska is capable and practical, aimed at commercial boats, and a serious failure means either flying a specialist up or running 600 miles south. Spares logistics are the single most common frustration crews report.

The rest of the downside is plain. It rains, it is cold, the water is unswimmable, the towns are small and the cruise ships got there first. Glacier Bay may refuse a permit. A commercially registered yacht is excluded from the private permit system altogether. Against that, an owner gets tidewater glaciers calving 200 metres off the beam and anchorages where nothing man-made is visible in any direction, which is a rarer commodity every year.

Who it is for: An owner with a long-range boat, a competent captain and no interest in being seen, who would rather watch a glacier calve than sit on a beach club.