Hi Scott, What a beautiful dissertation you wrote on cruising in the Northwest. The problem is, with your descriptions - including watching out for bears - you make me extremely jealous that I am located so far away from such a wonderful cruising area, and probably will never be able to experience it. As a tit for tat response, let me tell you about cruising along the Istrian coast in Yugoslavia, on the Adriatic. No bears (four legged kind), but lost of bares - (two legged kind) encountered everywhere. The Adriatic bares exhibit a remarkable range of natural coloring of their skin. (As a naturalist I observe these things) It goes from milky white to a scarlet red, and is particularly noticeable in areas that the "bares" usually have covered when they are in their winter habitat. Think dulcet breezes: steep too rocky shores; rocky islets with tiny villages - no provisions; no fuel; no water - but almost everyone at these villages plays a guitar and can sing in four part harmony. That is the way it is done every evening since there is no electricity and therefore no television (radio) on these islands. Distances between islands are short; never any fog, no reefs, no extreme tidal flows, but look out for the Bora. The Bora is a wind that sweeps down out of the Alps across the northern Adriatic and is like a young hurricane. Think flushing an old top tank toilet. At the right moment someone pulls the chain: the winds drop down from the cold heights of the Alps, accelerating all the way downhill and hitting the northern Adriatic area. I experience it once in Pula and stood anchor watch all night long (the Danforth held) and the next morning as I hauled it up - in a flat calm, of course, - my wife wanted to kiss it. She suddenly had a totally different feeling for the shape of an anchor and what an anchor represented. In Pula there is a Roman amphitheater - in far better shape than the one in Rome. The whole Adriatic area was a Roman vacation area, and everywhere you go you are treading on the same cobblestone streets used by Roman Legionnaires over 2000 years ago. .........and if you tire of the beauty and solitude in the Yugoslavian islands, you just head West across the Adriatic again for about 40 NM and land at Venice. Good food, good wine; history; great art......... What more could you want? But I'd sure like to sail in your lovely area, .......sigh! Connie