We just got back to SEAK after a wonderful trip to Prince William Sound. Our only regret is not having more time (we spent a little less than three weeks in Prince William Sound). Our good experience was strongly influenced by favorable weather--both crossings were pretty benign (mostly light winds, no winds over 15 knots, seas mostly ~3 feet at 9 seconds), and we had many days of sunshine in Prince William Sound.
We stopped in Lituya Bay on both crossings, though we didn't spend the night on the second visit. We entered and exited on various stages of the flood, up to about 3 knots of current, and found the entrance intimidating but easy and exactly as charted. We really enjoyed our visits!
We would have liked to have stopped in Yakutat and Icy Bay, but the weather was good, the crew rested, and the boat performing well, so we skipped them.
All the anchorages we visited in Prince William Sound were awesome. Maybe we chose well, but a far higher percentage of anchorages were spectacular rather than merely beautiful in Prince William Sound compared to SEAK. It was like we were in Tracy Arm, Cannery Cove, and Red Bluff Bay all the time. We think the density of spectacular places is higher in PWS than in SEAK. There certainly are a lot more glaciers around and they're much easier to visit (closer to anchorages and towns).
Wildlife viewing was good, too. We saw fewer whales than in SEAK, but more sea otters, porpoises, and bears. The salmon were an unexpected highlight. We aren't fishermen, but watching them school and spawn was wild. In one anchorage, we literally couldn't get the dinghy on plane without macerating salmon with the outboard.
We saw very few larger cruising boats, but tons of 20-30 foot fast pilothouse boats based in Prince William Sound. Lots of friendly locals, too!
On the crossings, we saw hardly any other boats. Four or five on the way to PWS, and just one on the way back. The Gulf of Alaska is a lonely place and watch standing was boring (thankfully!). In clear weather, the views of the Fairweather Range are incredible, even 40nm offshore. Icy Bay, in particular, looks incredibly beautiful. We want to go back and spend some time there.
Predictwind Pro and Iridium Go were awesome for weather, particularly the weather routing and departure planning functions, which allowed us to select weather windows with less than 1 meter seas and winds under 15 knots. The ECMWF model was quite accurate several days out.
This was my wife's first time offshore and running overnight. She doesn't care for ocean swells and questioned whether the trip across the Gulf of Alaska would be worth it. After going, she wants to go back and go further. We could have spent a lot more time in Prince William Sound (we didn't see all the tidewater glaciers, for instance). Kenai Fjords and Kodiak are tempting next steps.
