CMSD

We used Lazy Otter Charters for a 4.5 hour Blackstone Bay tour last week. We enjoyed the personal attention, beach landing and flexibility of a small tour (we briefly diverted because the captian heard a whale sighting report near us). They even held our luggage for us during the tour. I personally recommend Lazy Otter (if the have any openings), but there are a few other water taxi/sight seeing charters in Whittier.

We booked with Chilkoot Charters (a bus/train option). Our bus driver said she had to wait until the posted time in case the train depot sold any more tickets. So, they are not at the end of the pier (like in Juneau and Ketchikan), but you can check at the white pass depot to see if anything is available with them (and their partners).

We fly into Vancouver the morning of June 7th. Thanks for the heads up.

We will be getting on Noordam the afternoon you get off the ship. Any chance you can post the daily schedules (atleast for the Northbound portion). I am mostly interested in the sea days, but I wouldn't say no to the port day ship schedules. He a great cruise.

Not to get sidetracked, but which seafood place did you go to? I owe my wife fresh seafood for lunch before our Lumberjack show next month.

We are on a June 9th sailing of Noordam and the upgrade offers went out a few weeks ago, so this sounds about the same timing for our cruise. For ours the went top to bottom (upgrades to Vista, the upgrades to Signature, etc).

The rockslide was at the railroad pier, they did some work on the in the offseason, but I don't know if they fully remediated the rockslide yet. The floating dock is the Ore dock. They ripped out the old one last October while a new one was being built in Washington. While it was being transported to Skagway it was damaged near Ketchikan around February. It has been repaired an made it to Skagway this past Thursday. The mayor says they are on track to have the Ore dock operational for cruise ships by May 14th or 15th. Skagway is limited to 3 cruise ships until the Ore dock is up and running.

Inside passage means different things to different people. The very broad definition (which the cruise industry uses), is the area between Seattle/Vancouver and Juneau along the coast not in the open ocean. Arguably if you are going to Juneau/Skagway/Ketchikan/Endicott Arm you are in the inside passage. That being said, when a lot of cruisers say inside passage, they mean the area between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. In order to take the "preferred" route, you need to Leave out of Vancouver (with some exceptions) and have a ship that can fit under the under the Lions Gate Bridge. I marched up the attached picturebwith the broad definition and "preferred"(Inside of Vancouver Island) definition. SEA_KTN_ENC_JNU_SGY_XIP_YVJ_SEA_282x216-1.avif SEA_KTN_ENC_JNU_SGY_XIP_YVJ_SEA_282x216.avif