Inside Passage Perspective

Our image of the Inside Passage continues to evolve. We commented earlier that we were surprised about the amount of “big” water we saw early in the trip. This continues. While we’re regularly in narrow channels, as you can see in our photos, we’re most often in areas where the distance between islands is at least as great as that between Vashon Island and Des Moines (2-3 miles), and often as great as between downtown Seattle and Bainbridge Island (5 miles). The currents and tides are trickier than anything in Puget Sound, and there are only a couple areas in the San Juans that even come close. As we said before, not really a small boat trip, certainly at least 32’ and probably larger. North of Queen Charlotte Sound the nature of the boat traffic and settlement pattern has changed dramatically. There is only about 20% as much boat traffic as we saw further south. The boats we do see tend to be quite a bit bigger, and commercial fishermen make up a larger proportion of the mix. The human habitation has also dropped off to about 10% of the number of people seen further south. The type of human presence has also changed: down south there were lots of what looked like “summer homes”; up here they are full time communities, and the architecture looks much more functional. Queen Charlotte Sound is clearly the dividing line between casual and serious boaters.