WORLD
COURTESY LANI SCHROEDER
Believe it or not it's often warm enough to sail in a swimsuit during summers in the Northwest — or even go topless.
the surface — and the deep green hue of seemingly endless forests has an undeniably calming affect that could settle the nerves of even the most stressed-out workaholic. Both the American San Juan Islands and the Canadian Gulf Islands have dozens of well-protected anchorages — many equipped with overnight mooring balls — and the distances between them are usually short. Although you do need to be attentive to swift currents and wide tidal ranges, navigation in these waters is relatively easy; charts are spot-on and aids to navigation are abundant. You'll find ample infrastructure ashore for shopping, dining, 'pubbing' and reprovisioning, but you can also easily escape to secluded anchorages with little or no human development. Throughout the region winds tend to be light (under 10 to 15 knots) and the protected waters are what a San Francisco Bay sailor would probably call dead flat. And due to the region's northerly latitudes, days are extremely long, giving you four or five more hours of daylight than in the tropics. In mid-summer, for example, it doesn't get dark until around 9 p.m. Charter companies are peppered throughout the region, offering latemodel monohulls and a few multihulls. If you have ample experience, most companies will allow you to take a boat farther afield to the primeval fiords of Desolation Sound or up into spectacularly beautiful Princess Louisa Inlet on the Canadian mainland. It's true that the water temps here are much cooler than in, say, the Eastern Caribbean, but some bays get to a swimmable 70°, and there are dozens and dozens of freshwater lakes within LATITUDE / ANDY
Readers' Share Their Insights on Pacific Northwest Chartering If La Niña delivers as many wet, dreary days as anticipated, we're in for a very soggy winter — which is a good reason to start pipedreaming about sunny summer getaways. In fact, right now is the ideal time to plan a sailing vacation to the West Coast's most spectacularly beautiful sailing grounds, the Greater Puget Sound region — or as some call it, the Salish Sea. Why plan now? Primarily to lock in your top choice of boat for your ideal dates. Because the region isn't considered to be a year-round chartering destination, fleet sizes are substantially smaller than in popular tropical areas such as the BVI or St. Maarten. And the fact that this region gets many repeat customers — including Europeans who consider both the U.S. and Canada to be bargains these days — makes it even more important to book well in advance if you want a good selection of boats and available dates. The season runs from May to September, with the hottest — and most popular — months being July and August. If you haven't yet sailed these Northwest waterways, trust us, you will be greatly impressed. The area abounds with wildlife — both above and below
INSET LANI SCHROEDER
We bring you a special report this month on Summer Chartering in the Greater Puget Sound region, with tips and firsthand insights from a variety of Latitude readers.
easy walking distance of popular anchorages. As you might have guessed, we love sailing these waters, and we revisit them whenever we can. But we certainly don't consider ourselves to be experts on the subject. That's why we solicited tips and insights from Latitude readers to share with you. In the following pages you'll read excerpts from their comments. So we invite you to grab a pencil and a notepad and learn from their collective experiences: "Sailing in the Pacific Northwest is the biggest treat as far as West Coast sailing destinations go. We may not have that long a season, but the scenery is unforgettably breathtaking. Not only do we have the South Sound assortment of islands and gunkholes, but we are gifted with having the San Juan Islands along with the Canadian Gulf Islands. Nature didn't scrimp on providing us with a wide variety of mammals, other animals or birds to entertain us. "We often run across orcas and our seasonal gray whales, and then there are Dall's porpoises and otters scattered around the Salish Sea year round. In the skies we have bald eagles and os-