Possible Routes

This being our first major trip "North", we don't have a preferred route.  I have entered into our charting program Coastal Explorer (made by Rosepoint Navigation) a number of routes.  Some are mine from looking at the charts and cruising guides, some are from "Proven Cruising Routes, Seattle to Ketchikan" by Kevin Monahan and Don Douglass (Proven Cruising Routes). The routes are simply a collection of waypoints which would be passed to the autopilot to navigate to using a GPS. 

Most of the routes are too long to complete in a day (50 miles is a long day for us) but they work well for planning purposes. I've a bunch of routes for traveling north and a bunch of routes for journeys around put in many routes for Alaska that we won't get to this year. Hopefully in future trips, though. Additionally, we won't travel many of the routes because they are alternative routes to the same destination (you'd choose one over the other depending on sea and wind conditions).

If you care to view the routes, download this file Alaska 2007 possible routes and open it using Google Earth. What is really neat is selecting a route from the list in the left hand panel and pressing the "play" button. Google Earth will fly you along the route. You'll need a high speed Internet connection so that the photos can be downloaded rapidly. You may want to adjust the altitude and viewing angle in the Google Earth options menu otherwise you may be too close to the water to get a good perspective of the surroundings.