Both Vancouver and Seattle have great yacht refit facilities, making it easy to plan a maintenance period. Both cities are yacht-crew-friendly ports and flying crew in and out is easy. Because Alaska is part of the United States of America, US immigration visas apply.

When cruising from Vancouver, Victoria and Friday Harbour are great destinations in British Columbia. However, keep in mind that when clearing customs in these places, it is necessary to provide written declarations for the amount of alcohol and cigarettes carried on board.

Friday Harbour has a very good floatplane service with direct flights to Seattle, making it an ideal location for embarking guests and for obtaining provisions.

The north-west seafood is some of the best on the planet, and provisioning directly from the markets is a fantastic experience.

I would recommend stocking up in Vancouver then flying further provisions into Ketchikan, Juneau or Sitka. Floatplanes are reasonably priced and can be used as a taxi service to bring almost anything directly to your transom.

In Alaska, fuel can be obtained in Sitka, Juneau and Ketchikan, and although the price is higher than Vancouver or Seattle, the quality is always good. There are several berths for 80-plus-metre vessels, either in the cruise ship terminals or marinas in Juneau, Ketchikan or Sitka. For provisioning, Juneau was the easiest for essentials.

Currents and ice

Starting from Vancouver and heading north through the Inside Passage, you will immediately notice the current. Planning your run to go with it through certain passages will save you hours of slow running punching into it. Check the tides and currents and consult with the pilot.

In my experience, the Inside Passage has been ice-free from June to August, and running at normal cruising speed at night is not an issue.

Only when you approach the entrances to the fiords do you start to encounter ice, and the further you travel up the fiord, the more ice you need to manoeuvre around.

I won’t go into all the different types of ice you will encounter, but the most dangerous is the ice you cannot see. Small growlers the size of a car are a real hazard and are particularly hard to see at a distance of more than a quarter of a mile – even with binoculars. They float with their smooth, clear top just out of the water and will severely damage a stabiliser fin or steel plating if hit with any force.

Cruising through the fiords of Glacier Bay and Tracy Arm on our way to the glaciers, we found ourselves needing to navigate in and around ice floes, passing icebergs as large as single-storey houses.

Cruising highlights

Tracy Arm fjord is unmissable: a winding majestic waterway with 3,000-metre-high mountains on either side. The valleys, waterfalls and glacier are all spectacular. If you can, manoeuvre through the thick ice and position the yacht a quarter of a mile from the face of the glacier. Then launch the tender and kayaks so guests can get up close to witness the ice calving and white-speckled harbour seals dozing on nearby icebergs.

Anchoring in a small isolated bay surrounded by hills thick with pine trees, we found a stream full of salmon migrating back to their spawning grounds. We walked along a path above and there, in a small pool of water below us, a mother brown bear was teaching her cub to catch those slippery salmon.

Almost every day, there were humpback whale sightings. However, the real highlight was off Point Adolphus in the Icy Strait where ten or more whales would cruise back and forth in the current line. We positioned the yacht close by and launched the tender and kayaks so the owners and guests could experience the whales breaching and feeding all around us.

These giant humpbacks cruised the surface feeding on the small fish and krill, their mouths wide open.

For guests with a private jet (as large as a G4), the airport at Gustavus (GST) is only a 20-minute drive away from the park station at the entrance to Glacier Bay. Permits are required to cruise inside the bay, which can be purchased at the park station office. Other airports are at Juneau and Ketchikan.

Sitka is another unmissable destination and the passage there winds and twists through narrow waterways lined with waterfalls, pine trees and deserted pebble beaches. The current runs quickly through this area and a stop for breakfast or lunch might be necessary to wait for slack water in the narrowest section.

Once at Sitka, the fishing is excellent, the people are friendly and the town is charming and authentic. You can spend four months cruising from Seattle to Glacier Bay and back and never get bored with the scenery or wildlife this area has to offer. I highly recommend it.