:: Free Traveler ::

The dynamics of a cruise are interesting, because they involve so many variables. Everyone is thrown together in a group with a common goal (to get from A to B) but beyond that, it can be a mixed bag. People have different boats, different abilities, even different desires about what to do with any free time along the way (go fishing, take a nap, meet the natives, work on the boat, etc.). Add to that the ever-changing, always-unpredictable nature of the wind, sea and weather, and you have the potential for some serious differences.

All these factors were true on the Grand Banks 50th anniversary cruise to Alaska (see my feature in this issue). Yet I was taken by how much the owners and crew of these 16 yachts had coalesced into a functioning community by the time I had joined them for the last leg of their cruise, from Ketchikan to Wrangell. They had spent some fractious moments early on, debating when it was safe to cross long stretches of open water in 30-knot winds and coming to grips with the reality that some of the boats were considerably faster than the others. But those issues had all been resolved. By the time I got there, they all seemed to respect–and care for–each others’ boats and abilities. They were functioning as a unit.

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In the early morning fog and drizzle, we filed out of the narrow entrance to Meyers Chuck, Alaska–14 Grand Banks yachts, one after the other–before making a sweeping turn to the north, toward Wrangell, the end of an 800-mile, 19-day cruise up the Inside Passsage. A bald eagle was sitting on a rock barely out of reach, almost as if it were our own private aid to navigation marking the right side of the channel A pod of half a dozen black and white orca whales surfaced about 50 yards off our port bow, and then, as everyone ran for their cameras, more appeared off to starboard. Snowcapped mountains surrounded us on both sides, their steep green hills dotted with cascading waterfalls, the runoff of snow and glaciers up beyond our view. In the distance, one mist-shrouded mountain unfolded after the other, marching north as far as the eye could see, as if in a Japanese painting. Looking up the channel, past the orcas, one small outcropping after another dotted the sides of the channel, islands now, but really the drowned tops of mountains that were flooded when the glaciers melted some 12,000 years ago. And that was the overwhelming sense of the scene: Where we were, where we were going, the waters and the surroundings that go on forever; we were part of something very special.

In fact, we were on the Grand Banks 50th anniversary Grand Tour, a celebratory voyage that started in Poets Cove on South Pender Island, just across the Canadian border of the San Juan Islands north of Seattle, a tour that Grand Banks billed as “the trip of a lifetime.” And for the 16 yachts and their crews that started out, that was certainly true. We left two boats in Ketchikan, a day south of Meyers Chuck, one by design (that was as far as they had planned to go) and one by accident (after it hit a rock, wiped out a stabilizer and had to be hauled for repairs).