June 19, 2026 Sailing the Inside Passage

We were still cruising in the Great Bear Sea, portion of the Inside Passage, having travelled the length of Haida Gwaii, in the Hecate Strait overnight. We are in Canadian waters with the coast of British Columbia to the east.

As the ship cruised into Queen Charlotte Sound, she passed through the “recently announced Indigenous protected area and national marine conservation area reserve, Mia-yaltwa Ha’lidzogm hoon. The area is around 6,700 square kilometres and to be operated by Parks Canada along with its Indigenous (the Wuikinuxv, Nuxalk, Kitasoo Xai’xais, Heiltsuk, Gitxaała and Gitga’at Nations) and federal partners.

The passage narrows becoming Johnstone Strait, ending by Quadra Island, just north of Campbell River on Vancouver Island, the large island to the west. The southern boundary of the Great Bear Sea extends to Campbell River, where the channel widens to the south and becomes the Strait of Georgia.“ https://mpanetwork.ca/

The clocks were advanced one hour overnight to agree with Vancouver time.

Removing the SIM card that allowed Larry’s phone to use data and phone while in Alaska proved difficult this morning. The miniature hole on the cellphone into which a safety pin, paper clip or special tiny tool is inserted to release the tiny drawer holding the SIM card refused to budge after multiple tries, spaced over several hours. Even using a paper clip obtained from Guest Services, the drawer would not release. While in the Lido restaurant, he asked an assistant maitre d’ if he might use the tiny crab hook that we had used for our seafood dinner last evening. The very helpful assistant maitre d’ unpinned his name tag, inserted into the tiny SIM card drawer and the mechanism released and popped the miniature drawer. He was a miracle worker. Shortly the SIM cards were switched to Larry’s regular Fido SIM card. We were close to Port Hardy and within range of Canadian cellphone towers.

Today the sun was shining with some scattered cloud in the sky. At 7 a.m., the temperature was 11°C. T he wind was blowing from the north north west about 49 kilometres per hour.

Breakfast today was breakfast bagels and coffee on Deck 10 at New York Deli and Pizza overlooking the Deck 9 Lido pool. There were just a few people around and a pair of people swimming laps in the pool. In the Deck 2 dining room from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. was the Alaska Brunch. When we returned to our stateroom, along one hallway mounted to the wall, the was a Duck Mail box. A recent craze on cruise ships is for people to leave rubber ducks all over the ship for people to find. The mail box might be the next step in the craze.

At 11:30. a.m., in the Lido buffet was “Cake Me Away!”, where passengers could indulge their sweet tooth with a dizzying array of cakes and pavlovas. It was tucked into an area large enough to hold about a dozen different cakes. It was the smallest “Cake Me Away!” display we have seen. The Noordam in January had a much larger assortment in an area more than double the size and it was a smaller ship.

The morning program in the World Stage was the 45 minute “A City on the Sea” video, about the behind the scenes operation of the ship, which we have seen on other voyages. At the end several hundred waiters, kitchen workers, maintenance crew and cabin attendants marched down the aisle of the World Stage onto the stage to be saluted by the passengers. The 45 minute movie, “Alaska Up Close: The Iditarod” was next. It was about the multi day Alaskan dog sled race. In the afternoon another video in the World Stage “Alaska Up Close: Breaking the Ice Ceiling” about pioneering Alaskan women. In some of the bars and on the huge screen by the Lido pool, the World Cup FIFA matches have been shown daily.

For the first time since we boarded the ship late on Tuesday morning, we heard the Captain Fritz Carsjen’s noon announcement. He gave the ship’s position, a weather forecast for tomorrow in Vancouver and approximate time of the ship’s arrival in Vancouver.

We walked on Deck 3’s Promenade Deck for 40 minutes enjoying the fresh air and sunshine before joining Pam and Dave, from the land tour, for Brunch in the main dining room. We had a two hour visit.

In the elevator lobbies on the floors with staterooms and suites, scales have been set out so that people can weigh their packed luggage. The luggage must be tagged for identification and placed in the halls before midnight. The luggage will be transported to the terminal and picked up before clearing Canadian Customs at disembarkation after 7:30 tomorrow morning.

About 2:30 p.m. Captain Carsjen announced that the ship would be making a brief stop at Port Hardy, on Vancouver Island, to disembark a passenger for medical treatment. The detour would not delay our Vancouver arrival time. Once the ship was hovering one kilometre from Port Hardy, a coast guard boat could be seen travelling to the ship. It stopped about 200 metres from the ship. On Deck 3, the Promenade Deck, where the tender boats/ lifeboats are stored above the decking, one of the boats was lowered to deck level for the patient to be transferred to the tender boat. Then the tender boat was carefully lowered to the water and followed the coast guard boat into Port Hardy harbour. About 40 minutes later, the tender boat returned to the ship.

Once our ship was out of the bay, she resumed her charted course into the Inside Passage for Vancouver at 17 knots, gradually increasing to 19 knots, until part of the route became shallow. At Port McNeil. the channel narrows until reaching Campbell River when the distance between Vancouver Island and the mainland widens.

The ship slowed down for over an hour. The water on the mainland side was a series of tiny white caps. Once past the area the speed increased to 19 knots.

We had a 5:30 p.m. reservation at Tamarind, the Asian Fusion restaurant on Deck 10. We had a window seat and could see the change in the look of the shallows with its small white caps. We returned to our stateroom for jackets and went out to the jogging track on Deck 11 to watch for more shallows and chatted with Carol and John.

We had the second Mariner Cocktail coupon to use and went up to the Crow’s Nest on Deck 12 before returning back to the stateroom to pack and remember to keep out the clothes that we are going to wear in the morning.

Total steps =12,501 Flights of stairs = 33