Small Craft Route: Grenville Channel: Mile - Mile 501- 543

Grenville Channel, 500 miles north of Seattle, is for most travelers that take this route, the most dramatic part of their trip to Alaska. Not only does the water narrow to less than a quarter of a mile wide, but a slight bend makes the channel seem to disappear into the hills ahead and behind. Even the largest ships can seem insignifigant against this background.

"We were southbound, Grenville Channel, headed down to Seattle with a load of halibut. It was blowing like stink out in Hecate Strait, so we come on down through the Inside. Harald, he was steering, he musta' have fallen asleep, but a tree branch busted one of the pilothouse windows in, woke him up, he turned the boat and we never even hit the bottom." - a fisherman.

And it was here, on a June night in 1981, that a Soviet cruise ship almost crowded us into the shore at the narrowest part of the channel. It had been near midnight on a very dark and cloudy night when he approached me, and I called several times on channel 16: "Hello, the cruise ship southbound in Grenville Channel." After several calls without an answer, I began to get anxious, for if anything, the ship seemed to be favoring my side of the channel, and beginning to loom over me as she approached. I slowed down to an idle, and approached the shore until my rigging was almost in the trees. I couldn't make out the name of the ship, but high in the air above her top deck, a spotlight brillantly illuminated a huge red hammer and sickle. I looked up, hoping to see into the pilothouse, but couldn't see anyone.

The hum of her engines filled the air and then she passed so close that she seemed to graze us. I looked up and for an instant peered right into the plate glass windows of a ballroom, caught a glimpse of couples in long dresses and tuxedos, dancing and peering curiously out at the black. It was eerie - the big ship coming through the night, no one answering my radio call, the red ensign all lit up, and then the ballroom full of the dancing elite like a scene from Doctor Zhivago. Then the ship swept past and I put my boat in gear and pulled away from the shore before the wake arrived.

Looking north into Grenville Channel from near Sainty Point, mile 500. You can see where the channel narrows to about a quarter of a mile wide.

View of Grenville Channel from an Alaska Airlines jet at around 30,000'. The inlet off the channel in the middle of the photo is Klewnuggit Inlet, Mile 526. The narrowest part of the channel is just out of sight to the right.

Our gillnetter passing Serpent Waterfall, mile 521, in May of 1972. The side of the channel is so steep there that had we wanted water, we could have pulled right up to the waterfall without hitting the bottom.