Pacific Northwest & Alaska Cruising Accounts

Selected narrative and memoir titles about voyages from South Puget Sound through British Columbia and the Inside Passage to Alaska.

  1. Raban, Jonathan. Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings. Vintage, 2000.

    Literary travel narrative in which Raban sails a 35-foot boat from Seattle up the Inside Passage to Juneau, weaving together solo cruising, regional history, Indigenous and settler perspectives, and an unsparing account of personal loss.

    Publisher website: Penguin Random House (Vintage)

  2. Blanchet, M. Wylie. The Curve of Time. 50th anniversary ed., Whitecap Books, 2011.

    Classic memoir by Muriel “Capi” Wylie Blanchet, a widowed mother who spends successive summers cruising the coastal waters of British Columbia in a small motorboat with her five children, exploring remote coves, deserted village sites, and challenging tidal passes.

    Publisher website: Whitecap Books — The Curve of Time

  3. Seely, Kim Brown. Uncharted: A Couple’s Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another. Sasquatch Books, 2019.

    A Seattle couple buy a tired sailboat, learn to handle it, and point the bow north through the Salish Sea and the Inside Passage toward the Great Bear Rainforest, using the voyage and the search for the rare white Kermode bear to navigate the transition to an empty nest.

    Publisher website: Sasquatch Books — Uncharted

  4. Upton, Joe. Alaska Blues: A Season of Fishing the Inside Passage. Sasquatch Books, 1998.

    Memoir of a season spent longlining and trolling along Alaska’s Inside Passage, capturing the rhythms of small-boat commercial fishing, the mix of loneliness and camaraderie at sea, and life in working harbors from Southeast Alaska down toward the border.

    Publisher website: Sasquatch Books

  5. Upton, Joe. Journeys through the Inside Passage: Seafaring Adventures along the Coast of British Columbia and Alaska. 2nd ed., West Margin Press, 2003.

    A collection of seafaring narratives drawn from Upton’s years running small working boats along the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska, blending sea stories, coastal history, and portraits of the people and communities that line the Inside Passage.

    Publisher website: West Margin Press

  6. Pihlman, Dale. Alaska’s Inside Passage. Dale Pihlman, 2023.

    Part memoir and part richly illustrated almanac by a lifelong fisherman, pilot, and charter captain, combining personal stories with accessible explanations of wildlife, geology, Native cultures, and colorful local characters throughout Alaska’s Inside Passage.

    Publisher website: Alaska’s Inside Passage — official site

  7. Vassilopoulos, Peter. Cruising the Inside Passage: Puget Sound to Alaska. Pacific Marine Publishing, 2016.

    A large-format, photo-rich volume that follows the coastal route from Puget Sound through British Columbia to Southeast Alaska, pairing dramatic color images of anchorages, channels, and coastal communities with concise narrative captions and notes.

    Publisher website: Pacific Marine / OP Media Group — Cruising the Inside Passage

  8. Adams, Mark. Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. Dutton, 2018.

    Journalist Mark Adams retraces the 1899 Harriman Expedition by modern ferries and small vessels along Alaska’s coast, including the Inside Passage, Glacier Bay, and beyond, mixing contemporary travelogue with history, science, and commentary on a rapidly changing North.

    Publisher website: Penguin Random House (Dutton) — Tip of the Iceberg

  9. McKittrick, Erin. A Long Trek Home: 4,000 Miles by Boot, Raft, and Ski. Mountaineers Books, 2009.

    Adventure memoir following Erin McKittrick and her husband as they travel roughly 4,000 miles under their own power—on foot, by packraft, and on skis—from Seattle’s Puget Sound along the Pacific coast, through the Inside Passage and Gulf of Alaska, to the Bering Sea.

    Publisher website: Mountaineers Books — A Long Trek Home