Small Craft Route - Shoal Bay- Mile 220 E

"June 3, 1981: Shoal Bay, 4:30 a.m. Got up quietly with the first light just coming to the wild land all around and up the long dock for good walk past the abandoned lodge, rusting farm machinery. Back aboard, everyone still sleeping, I started the big diesel into smoky life, untied the lines, got a coffee and climbed up to the flying bridge.

"The whistle of the turbo, the rush of the tide, the green smell of the woods, and the rich smell of the sea. The noise, the lights of the crowded southern waters fall behind, and the still and wooded canyons leading north open ahead. This is my bell, ringing.

That spring of 1981, my wife and I had been burning the midnight oil to get our big fish packer ready for a long season in Alaska. When we left Seattle on the morning of June second, our decks and quarters were still piled with boxes of supplies and cannery freight to be stowed. The weather was good so we traveled through the night, caught the tide at Yuculta Rapids and with an hour of daylight left, tied, the only boat, at the shoal bay dock.

It was magic - I've always felt that the true north coast begins in these islands.

And that same year, coming back, it was early November when we stopped in there one chilly dusk. It had been a long, hard season, especially the last month, buying fish up in the glacier hung fjords east of Glacier Bay, running 24 hours twice a week back and forth to the cannery. You'd think after 150 days on the boat, we'd be eager to get back, to our nice house, to our friends, to our winter lives. But I was torn - I knew that the next morning we'd go through Yuculta Rapids and a few hours later, into Georgia Strait with all the noise and the lights and traffic of the South Coast. Our season was over. We had to go. But the spell of The North was still strong and I didn't much want to let go.

Top: Looking out at the Shoal Bay dock from the meadow. Yuculta Rapids is about 20 miles to the right. Bottom: the winding channels between Shoal Bay and Johnstone Strait, some 40 miles are among the most dramatic of the entire Inside Passage. Actually, northbound mariners also have to transit Whirlpool Rapids and Greene Point Rapids before they get into the wider waters of Johnstone Strait. But these are less hazardous than Yuculta, and most vessels plan to transit Yuculta at high tide slack water and then ride the ebbing, northbound current through Whirlpool and Greene Point Rapids.