Radar Important for Inside Passage to Alaska?

[susswein]

Originally Posted by shutter puppy

I'm back from the trip. Left May 6 and got back Aug 20. Sailed up to the grand Pacific Glacier and back 2896 nm. Did not get radar. managed to avoid needing it mostly. Wish I had AIS. I rolled the dice and crossed Queen charolette strait in the fog. I had 2 other sailboats with Radar who were fairly close and were watching out for me and looking for targets that might be a problem. All in all I would do it again. but I would not go outside without radar. I wanted to go on the outside on this trip but continual fog reports kept me from venturing out. Also I was racing South to get out of the fog zone starting July 1. I crossed QC strait about Aug 1.

I remember that you had planned to sail as much as possible on this trip. I'm curious about how well that worked out and your ratio of sailing miles to motoring miles.

Steve

[shutter puppy]

re: sailing vs motoring. Everyone who said I'd have to motor a lot was right. However it worked out a little surprising. I sailed 2/3 of the way up to Juneau. But on the way south as soon as I left glacier bay I got into SE winds. I had SE All the way down Chathum thru Rocky Pass. I reached down Sumner past Wrangell and down the backside to Anan. Then back on the nose to Ketchikan and no wind crossing Dixon... none. We did beat into it some but often we had a deadline to make a narrows or a destination before the tide cycle ended so we just had to motor or motor sail. I think we sailed 1/4 of the way back and mostly that was from Johnstone Strait. I did make it back to oly basically on one fill up from Port Macniel.