‘Jedi Boat’ was perfect vessel for Alaska adventure

In July 1999, I flew from my home in Juneau, Alaska, to Seattle to accompany my foster son, Randy, and son-in-law, Ralph, on a small open-boat cruise up the 1,000-mile Inside Passage from Anacortes back to Juneau. This trip was the culmination of a lifetime dream for Randy, and of a more recent dream for Ralph and me.

Randy had prepared for six months, with complete charts of the waters and a battery-operated GPS unit to help us safely navigate. He plotted fuel stops at least every hundred miles. Randy’s preparation also included stocks of food to sustain us if we had to camp on the beach for an extended period. Every nook and cranny in the boat was stuffed with food, including beef jerky, dried apples, 72 cans of Dinty Moore beef stew, and 40 pounds of trail mix!

Our motto for the trip was shouted in greeting to every vessel we met or overtook: “Ralph, Randy and Frank, heading to Alaska.”

During the trip, we camped ashore in a tent, a British Columbia Fisheries cabin and a U.S. Forest Service cabin. We enjoyed sirloin steaks cooked over campfires, and also eating in restaurants of the many small towns along the way.

The most worrisome portion of the trip was crossing Queen Charlotte Sound, north of Vancouver Island, which was at zero visibility because of dense fog and had large roller waves coming in off the Pacific Ocean. In five- and six-foot waves for about five hours, Randy became violently seasick.

While piloting the boat through the fog, I accidentally hit a key on the GPS that “hid” the course, speed, heading, and other information. Ralph and I repeatedly turned to Randy, lying in the back of the boat, and said, “Randy, we lost the course data!” He always weakly replied, “It’s all right, just keep going.” He knew it would be all right, but we didn’t. All we could do was follow the boat symbol on the GPS screen. When we came out of the fog bank, there were the headlands on the left and right — exactly where the chart indicated!

One night we set up the tent on crushed shells — next to an Indian sea urchin processing plant at Bella Bella, B.C. While there, a young Native man whose house overlooked the boat harbor admired our boat with these words: “I woke up this morning, and looked out my window and there it was — the Jedi boat! And it’s not even the year 2000 yet!” After that, I began to call our vessel the Jedi Boat.

After a very “lumpy” crossing of Dixon Entrance, our first campsite in Alaska was at a sandy, protected cove at Cape Fox. I was trying to get a fire going with a handful of wet wood while Randy and Ralph explored the area. Near camp, they found a big pile of fresh steaming brown bear scat. Randy developed a sudden interest in fires — big fires — and in no time at all, he had firewood piled four feet high! We had a fine “white man’s fire,” which lasted long into the night.

The most comfortable camp of the trip was the Forest Service cabin at Berg Bay, an A-frame with an oil stove. Ralph went right to sleep that night, while Randy and I stayed awake, telling tales of strange occurrences, Kooshta-kahs (that’s a legendary Sasquatch-like creature of the woods), bear attacks and other wild stories. Randy finally dropped off to dreamland, while I laid there wide-eyed, waiting for a Kooshta-kah to show up. Before going to sleep, I had to get up, load the shotgun, and lay it right beside my sleeping bag!

We arrived at Juneau seven long days after leaving Anacortes. Ralph decided to walk the few blocks to my house to get the Jeep and meet us at the boat harbor. We let him off on the riprap near a bridge pier and he stepped onto the tidal mud flat, unexpectedly sinking up to his crotch. To extricate himself, he had to lie flat on the mud and wallow like a walrus across to the firm shore! He hosed himself off when reaching the convenience store near the bridge. What an ignominious end to an extraordinary journey!

After spending five days in Juneau, Randy and Ralph left on the Jedi Boat to return to Anacortes. As they cruised down Juneau’s Gastineau Channel at 5 a.m., two huge cruise ships were coming up the channel. The Jedi Boat looked like a gnat headed south.

We were hooked! One thing was certain: We would make this trip again. But that’s another story.

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