Rowing Wooden Skiffs 220 Miles from Sitka to Juneau

Bill Spear and Susan Kirkness row the St. Lawrence River skiff Louise down Lisiansky Straight.

In the summer of 1994 Viju Matthew and I were invited on an incredibly unique trip rowing classic St. Lawrence River wooden skiffs from Sitka Alaska back to Juneau via the outside waters of the inside passage and through Icy Straight. It was a pretty bold proposal requiring us to row 225 miles in some of Alaska’s most gnarly waters (check out Cross Sound, Inian Pass, and the Lynn Canal). Our dear friends Bill and Susan have a beautiful home right on the coast just north of downtown Juneau. They had taken up rowing several years prior and befriended legendary Alaskan rowing Peter McKay. Amongst many of Peter’s accomplishments he had rowed a St. Lawrence River skiff from Seattle to Glacier Bay Alaska (that is well in access of 1000 miles). Peter was planning a trip rowing his tandem skiff with his wife Sarina from Sitka back to Juneau via the outside waters and then to cut back into Cross Sound, through the turbulent waters of South Inian Pass, across the mouth of Glacier Bay and then cross the wind and wave tunnel that is Lynn Canal before hitting the final stretch to Juneau. You might think that this story would then go something like, and then Peter invited his friend’s Bill and Susan and Viju and I along on the trip. Well, while Peter was a super nice guy, he was also very adverse to being the head of an organized trip. While he did not mind if friends tagged along, he made it clear that he was not going to be the trip leader and that he indeed might not even share his day to day plans with us while out there in the wilderness. This made the trip all the more exciting since not only did Viju and I have zero training on rowing technique but there was a solid chance that at some point in the trip we would wake up in the morning only to find that Peter and Sarina were gone with the early morning tide (and this would have happened were we not able to spot them in the distance). We took 12 days to row back to Juneau, although we did have a couple of rest days mid-journey and a couple of times the party split into two to explore different areas on the charts. We did indeed part ways for the last several days of the trip but by then we all felt quite capable of getting home safely independent of each other. The captions to the photos below tell more of details to the story.

The route we took began on the outside coast of Chichagof and Baranov Islands and then cut into the northern entrance to the Inside Passage via Cross Sound.

Viju and i arrived at Bill and Susan’s home several days prior to the start of our trip so that we could practice our rowing techniques on the waters right outside Bill and Susan’s home.

The journey begins by us pulling the skiffs from the water and transporting them from Bill and Susan’s home to the Juneau ferry building.

We were an odd site waiting to board the Alaskan Maritime Ferry with wooden boats on dollies and not an RV.

We secured the boats inside the ferry’s vehicle deck.

Upon arrival in Sitka we literally rolled the boats off of the ferry and right down to the shore besides the ferry. We then launched the skiffs and put our boat dollies back on the ferry to be delivered back to Juneau. We started rowing back within an hour of arriving in Sitka.

Susan powers the Louise while Bill navigates from his position in the stern. Being a rowboat the rowing has their back to the direction of travel.

He is the viewpoint of the navigator seated atop gear in the stern of the boat. There is in no seat for anyone besides the rower.

The waters were typically calmer in the early mornings and as the winds picked up in the middle of the day so would the waves. Because of this we frequently left camp very early in the mornings and completed our rowing for the day before noon. Tides were also a huge factor in deciding what time we should be out on the water rowing.

We camped back in the rain forest as bears frequent the beaches at night looking for food.

Camping with 20 foot long wooded boats was a totally new experience for Viju and I. Normally we are hyper conscious of the amount of gear we bring camping but the skiffs had ample room to bring some luxuries. In the evening we rigged a pulley system that would allow us to moor our boats out from the beach and in the mornings all we had to do is pull a line to ferry the skiff back to shore. This allowed us to store all of our food items out of bears reach in the boat.

One of the most startling moments I have experienced in the wilderness happened one morning when Viju was rowing and we were about a half of a mile off of the coast in the Gulf of Alaska. We were intentionally going around a section of coast known as the potato patch where there were numerous rock obstacles not always visible depending on the tides. Keep in mind that this trip preceded handheld GPS’. According to our nautical chart we were giving a wide berth to the known rock obstacles. As Viju was rowing we were experiencing large ocean swells and with that comes deep troughs between the swells. As Viju was looking over his left shoulder toward the coast we entered into an exceptionally deep trough. At the bottom of the trough not 10 feet to our starboard rose an enormous rock. The swell quickly lifted us back up and the rock disappeared. My face instantly turned pale. Up to that point in the trip I had thought the dangers we faced were predictable and if you planned accordingly they were insignificant. My false sense of security was lost after that moment. Had we been 10 feet over we would most certainly have capsized in an instant. The thought of being in those waters and that far from shore makes my heart race to this day.

We were dwarfed by our surroundings the entire length of our journey.

Peter reviewing the charts with us on a rare sunny camp evening.

Viju enjoys his evening martini in the Alaskan wilderness. A modern twist to the concept of enjoying tea in the Sahara.

Chilling out in mother nature with friends. Life really does not get better than this.

Occasionally we stayed at camp for a day instead of rowing due to high winds in the forecast. On these days we beach-combed. Here a ship’s life preserver was found washed ashore.

Either a bear or sea lion skull (to the untrained eye they look nearly identical).

While we always consulted tide charts when setting up our mooring lines at night, sometimes we mis-calculated the depth of the water we were in! Our boats high and dry at morning low tide.

The waves on the beach were mesmerizing to listen to at night.

On the morning of the final day spent on the outside coast before entering the Inside Passage the group members gather at sea to discuss whether we felt comfortable or not trying to make an end run around the outside coast of Yakobi Island or whether we should cut into Lisiansky Strait and into sheltered water. As much as we all wanted to have rounded outside of Yakobi, the horizon was very dark and there were no protected bays on the outside coast of Yakobi to seek shelter in if the conditions worsened.

We depart the Gulf of Alaska and head into the protected waters of the Inside Passage.

Viju makes good time in the smooth waters of Lisianki Straight.

This image captures some of the sense that I felt out there regarding how magnificent nature is and yet how inconsequential our lives can be relative to it. One afternoon we left some protected waters on the outside coast. We split the gap at Dry Pass between rocks on both our starboard and port with giant ocean waves crashing on them. We entered the Gulf of Alaska and rowed into large swells. At that moment I realized how if we were to capsize we would probably struggle for a few minutes at best before succumbing to the frigid waters. And then we would be gone and yet the gulls and cormorants would continue to squawk, the waves would continue to crash, the sun would continue to shine, the only difference would be that Viju and I would no longer be rowing a boat there. Nothing else would change. The day would go on, business as usual. That was not only a sobering realization it was liberating.

Bill and Susan in the Louise. We spent the last two days of the trip with them alone as Peter and Sarina opted to row home via Point Carolus.

Bill and Susan in their boat the Louise.

Bill and Susan prepare for the final day rowing across Lynn Canal and back to their front porch.

I believe this may be the only photo of me from this entire trip. Photo by: Viju Matthew

The winds and waves picked up during our crossing of Lynn Canal making for a long and rough final day of rowing.

Immediately upon pulling ashore at Bill and Susan’s home after 12 days of rowing we broke on the scotch and Viju pulled out his Bombay Sapphire for a celebratory toast!