We were moving slowly north along the edge of South Marble Island, a rocky hump in Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve. Our vessel was so close to a sea lion colony that we could smell their fishy stench and hear the grunts of the huge, scarred males as they guarded their harems.
It was an intimate encounter with nature that the thousands of passengers on the giant cruise ship I could see sailing out of the bay to the west would never experience.
My wife, Suzanne, and I were aboard the 120-foot Safari Quest, a luxury yacht on an eight-day voyage from Sitka to Juneau, Alaska. We had already spent five days cruising along the narrow inlets and fjords of Baranof and Chichagof Islands, stopping each night in small coves surrounded by the spectacular mountains of Alaska's Panhandle. Already we had seen dozens of humpback whales, pods of Dall's porpoise, sea otters, bald eagles, tufted puffins, seals and both brown and black bears.
We had also stopped at a fishing outpost that had one permanent resident and another with a notorious bar boasting the slogan “Take your pants off. Let's have a party!”
Now, as Safari Quest passed the sea lion colony, we were approaching the climax of our trip: a close-up view of the glaciers that had carved out the bay.
More than a decade ago, I had rafted for 12 days with my son and daughter down the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers from the Yukon Territory to the vast, wave-pounded beaches of Dry Bay on Alaska's Pacific Coast. It was my first encounter with the massive glaciers and snow-capped mountains of Glacier Bay.
It left me wanting another encounter with this wild country, but this time without damp sleeping bags, biting bugs and meals cooked over a campfire. I found a compromise with American Safari Cruises, a small company that operates three yachts on a series of summer cruises around the thousands of islands that make up the Inside Passage.
The company promised “luxury in the pursuit of adventure.” With the almost bespoke nature of the cruise, that luxury would come at a price – one that was several times as much as that charged by the large ships that ply the Passage.
We began our early June adventure in Sitka, the picturesque former capital of Russian Alaska on the west coast of Baranof Island. After our bags had been collected and taken to the Safari Quest, we were given a city tour that included the Alaska Raptor Center, one of the largest facilities in North America for treating and rehabilitating injured birds.
When we reached the sleek, white yacht, the first instalment of the promised luxury began when we were welcomed aboard with glasses of champagne by Captain Shawnda Gallup, her mate Megan Pearia and the other eight members of the crew.
As the boat got under way, it was time for cocktails and hors d'oeuvre in the comfortable salon. After the boat anchored for the night in a small cove, chefs Craig White and Brad Holtz served up a choice of roasted prime rib with rosemary au jus or wild white salmon with tropical fruit salsa, accompanied by a selection of fine California wines. It was the first in a series of gourmet meals that ranged from veal marsala and filet mignon to crab cakes and herb-encrusted rack of lamb.
The elegant and intimate dining room would also be the place passengers got to know each other. There were 16 of us – five Canadians, a couple from France, a couple from Britain and seven Americans. We ranged in backgrounds from a banker and a retired entrepreneur to a pair of young doctors on their honeymoon, a Texas executive, a financial consultant, the director of group sales for the Oriental Hotel Group and a photographer whose next trip would be to war-ravaged Darfur. Entertaining conversations and anecdotes roamed across French politics, the war in Iraq, infuriating encounters with the American health-care system and even a hilarious account of an ill-fated camper trip on Yukon's Dempster Highway.
