On the Inside Passage to Alaska
 Sue Hoover
I've just had a wonderful trip! I flew from Seattle to Vancouver to Prince Rupert, BC, where I joined Stephen as crew on his 38' sloop for 10 days up the Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Wrangell, and Petersburg.
 
This is the land of big trees, totem poles, bald eagles and salmon. There in SE BC and SE Alaska it rains a lot! Prince Rupert gets 10' of rain per year, Ketchikan 12 ', Petersburg nearly 7'. Met Stephen at Rupert, where we waited a day for a package, then a day for bad weather. What good luck! After days with intense rain and wind we had 2 ideal sunny days of sailing, beam and broad reaching at 6 and 7 knots with steady beam wind of 10-16 knots, across huge Chatham Sound, traveling 41 NM. The next day was equally perfect, 35 NM. across Dixon Entrance. "This is what I came for," Stephen said. "This is the best, and almost the only, sailing I've had in 800 miles from Shilshole Marina in Seattle."
 
Stephen was glad to have me as crew and doing galley duties. Getting ready to dock, I looped dock lines over the toe rail so I could reach them there at the middle of the boat,  stepped off Kharma with the breast line, made it fast, did the same with bow and stern lines. Stephen said, "Someone has taught you right!" I replied, "Nancy Erley taught me. She's a fine instructor and a wonderful person."
  
Another day we sailed for about 4 hours. Five 5 Dall's Porpoises came along with us for over an hour, beside us, on the bow wave, parallel out to one side or the other, diving under us, and crossing close just in front of the bow. This was thrilling!
  
Stephen's 38' sloop "Kharma" has all the essentials, Stephen knew where everything was, had installed alot of it himself, could fix most of it, and the boat was well equipped. 
He's sailed all his life, owned Kharma 11 years, been getting ready for this trip for 3 years. He'll only do it once as it is so many miles, a long grind with changeable and sometimes severe weather, fog, narrow passageways with strong currents, and thick forest to the water's edge to get up the Inside Passage to where weather is better, waters open up, there are more towns, wildlife, and glaciers. Stephen is amazing. He's doing this long trip, doing almost all of it on his own, and with an inadequate Tiller Tamer. He'll have been about 2400 miles when he returns to Shilshole in Sept. 
 
We motored a lot through incredibly beautiful country, much of it the Tongass National Forest. At 17 million acres this is the largest of our national forests, nearly all forested, some recently cutover, some second growth, no doubt some remaining old growth, with snow on higher mountains near and far, waterways in all directions of all sizes and shapes, and zillions of islands. We anchored a few times in very beautiful, quiet, well-protected bays with narrow entrances. An inlet on Dundas Island had a large welcoming committee. Just at dusk tiny black gnats were there and we were both bitten on the face and neck about 40 times. The bites itched for a number of days then were red spots for a week. Stephen will not anchor there on his way back! We were lucky to be tied in a slip each time we had to stay over for strong winds. We walked the town, talked with the locals, checked out the museum, bought groceries, did laundry, and ate restaurant meals.
 
This entire coast has been hard hit by the recession, consequently many shops are closed. The last of the many huge paper mills closed in the early 1990's for lack of easily accessible timber. One source of supply is cheaper timber in South Africa. Another factor was regulations such as those from EPA regarding the use of chemicals including chlorine, and disposing them so they could not run into the bay. At Sitka 350 people lost their livelihoods and the resulting loss of jobs, money and people was a big impact on the town. The big cruise ships stop there so 200,00 visitors a year help that town survive. There were 3 cruise ships per week at Prince Rupert and now only one. Visitors want more diversity; so the ships go instead to Victoria. Many dozens of huge canneries and mills have gone. No cruise ships stop at Petersburg because Wrangell Narrows are too narrow. The work there has been and is in fishing. There are 2 or 3 processing plants, some preparing fresh fish (fish= salmon) flown refrigerated, not frozen, to Seattle. I left Petersburg, Alaska, on 6/28 for Seattle. The Boeing 737-400 I flew out on was a "combi" with a few tons of prepared fish in the cargo hold, the first section of the plane.     
 
I took the tour of the North Pacific Cannery now a museum 25 minutes by bus from Prince Rupert. Until sometime in the 1940s the only access was by boat. The tour guide told us the history of the cannery, which usually had 500 employees. Chinese were the first workers, all illiterate except the "China Boss." The workers were paid in script and used their script to buy anything, the only items available in this wilderness, in the company store. At the end of the season, the China Boss got all the pay for the workers, and he paid the men. This reminded me of the song Johnny Cash sang, related to coal mines with company housing and store in the wilderness. "Load sixteen tons and whad'ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store." 
 
At this web, there's a picture of Prince Rupert in its marvelous setting and a write up & pictures of the cannery. Imagine the tons of canned salmon that went from there during the years of operation, 1889 to 1981, by ship to all the world, and later by rail east into Canada and the US.
 
I talked with one of the crew of 5 on a seiner from Ketchikan, a fellow who has been coming to the Petersburg area to fish on this boat for most of 30 years. Been many good years when after a summer here he took something around $40,000 home to his family in northern VT. The crew's last big year was over 1 million pounds of salmon in 2003, before there were catch quotas on fish boats. The commercial fishermen think there should be more stringent catch limits enforced on sport fisherman.  
  
I am very fortunate. To be crew on a small sailboat, travel the Inside Passage through magnificent country as far as N56 48', learn more about people, fish, and sailing, all made this a fabulous adventure!