Hello to our charter clients and friends who are thinking about doing  or have committed to do Leg 1, the Inside Passage from Bellingham (The Salish Sea) to Ketchikan Alaska. My name is Brian Pemberton.  I am the owner of NW Explorations and will be leading our trip to Ketchikan.   I made my first trip to Ketchikan in 1967 and have never lost my enthusiasm for returning.  I recently came across an excellent video made by Tony Fleming, the founder of Fleming Yachts and a long time designer and senior executive at Grand Banks Yachts.  I was very impressed with the quality of this video and Tony’s narration. As tony traveled to many of the places that we are planning to go, I thought you might enjoy seeing what you can expect on this journey.  We will visit many of the special lagoons and remote anchorages.  This is a wonderful time of the year, early in the season to see the water falls at their peak.  While there has been significant retreat of many of the glaciers in South East Alaska we can still find plenty of ice and with some luck witness the glacier as it calves off mammoth chunks of ice.  We can usually count on seeing black and brown bears, humpback and Orca whales, sea otters and of course lots of bald eagles.  We at NW Explorations look forward to cruising with you on this magnificent voyage.

Captain Brian