Over the past half century or so, Sam Devlin has designed and built a lot of boats.
By his own count, he’s built 434 boats. He estimates that another thousand or so have been constructed to his designs by others, and he’s written two books about the stitch-and-glue method he uses to assemble his boats.
But at 70, Devlin is trying something new. He’s trying to learn how to slow down. Although, by his own admission, he’s not so sure he can.
“This is going to be an interesting experiment,” Devlin tells me by phone from his shop in Olympia, Wash., a couple of months before I join him aboard Puffin, the 1966 wooden trawler he purchased for a summer trip to Alaska. “I’m not sure if I know how to slow down, but Puffin can only do 6 knots, so we’re going to find out.”
Two months later, I fly into Ketchikan, Alaska. At one of the marinas, Jim Miller, who was the president and general manager of WoodenBoat magazine and has known Devlin for 30 years, helps me get my gear aboard. Within seconds, Devlin pops out of the salon and gives me a tour of the boat.
Puffin is a big 47-footer. She weighs in at a hefty 88,000 pounds, and she has a 15-foot, 5-inch beam, a 6-foot draft and ample topsides. Forward of the full-beam engine room are three staterooms with two bunks each and a single head with a separate shower.
Devlin tells me that building a boat for this trip was not an option. “I can’t afford my own boats,” he says, but buying the traditionally built, plank-on-frame trawler was a no-brainer. Puffin was designed by William Garden, Devlin’s all-time favorite designer. She’s also a double-ender and has a Gardner engine, two other things Devlin loves. And having a head aboard was a huge upgrade. “I’ve never had a boat with a head,” Devlin says.
I ask if this Alaskan adventure is a retirement trip. He answers quickly with a firm “no.” Miller scoffs when he hears the question. “He’ll never retire,” he says.
Over dinner at Ketchikan’s Oceanview restaurant, I meet the rest of the crew. Mark Bunzel is the editor and publisher of the Waggoner Cruising Guide. He and Devlin have been friends since 2004, when Devlin organized a flotilla to Alaska and got Bunzel a bunk. Bunzel wanted to do a 20th-anniversary cruise with Devlin, so he asked him to lead the 2024 Waggoner cruise to Alaska. Bunzel has led the annual cruises since he purchased the publisher back in 2012.
They left Anacortes, Wash., on May 28 in an 11-boat flotilla with Bunzel supplying routes, weather reports, insider information and daily advisories. “I’m trying to push cruisers to extend themselves,” Bunzel says. “To go to places they haven’t gone before.”
Devlin and Bunzel tell me they had a rough crossing at Queen Charlotte Sound. Cape Caution is the most exposed part of the Inside Passage and can deliver big swells, wicked currents and wind-stacked waves. “We ran into 20-foot seas,” Devlin says. “That wasn’t a particularly fun day.”
Also joining the crew in Ketchikan is Bunzel’s wife, Danielle. By now, the Waggoner fleet is down to six boats. Still along for the cruise are Imagine, a Selene 40; Paqui, a Nordhavn 50; Green Eyes Too, a Carver 32; and two Fleming 55s dubbed Why Knot and Passage.
Early on my first morning, Miller already has the coffee going. Puffin has a shiny Washington oil stove in the galley. It also heats the salon. Because the diesel-fed stove runs nonstop, a kettle of hot water is always at the ready for the French press.
Devlin goes below to check the Gardner 6LXB motor. The standing-headroom engine room is clean and well-lit. The walls are lined with tools of almost every kind, from a full assortment of wrenches to a varnished wooden block with four pencils sticking up, points perfectly sharpened.
Devlin is clearly meticulous. I could eat a meal right off the 6LXB’s valve cover, although I’m pretty sure Devlin wouldn’t be happy if I made a grilled cheese on his baby.
Devlin pampers the powerplant. Every morning, he looks for oil seepage and carefully wipes the engine down. He tells me she has burned 3 gallons of oil in the past 120 hours, a rate that he says is normal for old-style engines. “An engine needs his oil, like a sailor needs his rum,” he says as he tops it off.
We shove off and head north through the Tongass Narrows. Ketchikan sits on the Alaska Marine Highway System, a state-
operated ferry system that services the bigger towns along the Inside Passage. The town is a popular stop for cruise ships. Even though there are fewer than 9,000 residents, more than a million people visit every year. As we make our way to the Clarence Strait, Princess Cruises’ Grand Princess heads down the narrows to port, and Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth and the Holland America Line’s Zaandam come down the narrows to starboard.
Devlin holds a steady course. Puffin has an array of navigational equipment that ranges from an almost-vintage Furuno 1700 radar system and a polished brass Sea-Master magnetic compass—replete with two oil lamps to light the compass rose at night—to an iPad with the latest navigational software and AIS.
Devlin smells diesel and heads below to investigate. Within minutes, a humpback whale pops up in front of the boat. Bald eagles are everywhere. “They’re like pigeons,” Miller deadpans. It’s one of many one-liners he’ll fire off over the next seven days.
The water is calm, so I ask Devlin for permission to climb up to the crow’s nest. He installed it right before the cruise. It has rat boards to port and starboard to get to the perch, which sits about 25 feet above the water. I take a few rat boards up when my fear of heights kicks in and I lose my nerve.
That evening, we stop at Meyers Chuck, a tiny, quaint community. Dinner for the Waggoner cruisers is a potluck on the dock, but Devlin is invited to a dinner party by a friend from his Alaska tug days who he hasn’t seen in 50 years. As he heads out, Miller is smoking his pipe on the stern. Like Fred MacMurray’s dad on My Three Sons, he pulls the pipe out of his mouth and without looking up, says, “Don’t forget to put your napkin in your lap.”
Early the next morning, I give the crow’s nest another try. The scariest part is the transition from the rat boards into the back of the nest, which requires hanging on with one hand while stepping into thin air, but I make it onto the platform.
We’re the last boat to leave the dock because the fresh cinnamon buns haven’t arrived yet. Bunzel knows that Cassie, one of the few year-round residents, bakes to order. We watch as the town’s former postmaster comes out of her house, gets into her aluminum skiff and delivers the baked goods.
We eat the buns as we take the Clarence Strait toward the Stikine Strait. Devlin calls his wife, Soitza, in Olympia, while we use the Starlink antenna on the cabin top that connects us to the outside world. The Starlink is a great safety feature, but it’s a double-edged sword. It’s also a distraction that keeps us from enjoying the splendors outside the windows. I make my way up to the crow’s nest and take in the views of the snowcapped mountains.
As we go up the Zimovia Strait, the water suddenly turns from a deep blue to a murky light green. This meeting of waters is due to the sediment-laden glacial meltwater that flows into the ocean from the mountains. The cold, fresh river water sits on top of the warmer, saltier and denser ocean water, creating a sharp, distinct line between the two.
We spend the night in Wrangell, a fishing port with plenty of liveaboards, which Bunzel says is because of the low dockage rates. We eat dinner with the Waggoner crowd at the Lodge of the Hungry Beaver, which is full of locals, all of whom could have been cast on the 1990s hit TV show Northern Exposure.
The next morning, the flotilla heads for the Wrangell Narrows, a 22-mile-long, twisting channel with about 60 navigational markers.
By now I’ve joined the boat routine: get up, drink coffee, handle dock lines and fenders, eat breakfast underway, enjoy the scenery and look for marine wildlife. Miller keeps things light with his one-liners. He handles most of the galley chores, takes turns at the wheel, reads and smokes his pipe on the stern.
The Bunzels keep busy on their computers and phones. Mark Bunzel readily shares interesting tidbits about Alaska and makes calls for the flotilla to marinas, restaurants and excursion operators. Danielle Bunzel runs a travel business, and together, the couple run the Waggoner and Fine Edge publishing businesses from the boat.
I try to contribute where I can by taking turns at the wheel and helping in the galley, but besides spotting wildlife, it’s mostly a joyride for me.
But not for Devlin, who is responsible for the vessel and her passengers. He seems to be enjoying himself, but other than having a cocktail and smoking a cigar on the stern at the end of the day, he is constantly occupied. He makes engine checks, cleans stray bagel crumbs off the counter and makes soups. I ask him if he’s learning to slow down. “Puffin has been keeping me busy and has kept me from thinking about work, which is good for my psyche,” he says. I pour him another cup of coffee and notice the pot is getting low. I ask Miller if we should make more. “Never ends when you’re in my business,” he deadpans.
By now, the crow’s nest has become my spot, and I go up to take in the view of the Narrows. One of the Alaska State ferries, Kennicott, comes our way, and rather than scramble down, I decide to ride it out atop my aerie. Devlin takes the ferry’s wake on the nose, and I get a nice hobbyhorse ride.
I want to get some photos of Puffin underway, so I climb down to transfer over to Green Eyes Too. Devlin and Miller tell me that Luis Jimenez’s Carver 32 will be the perfect photo boat. “Luis is a really nice guy and an excellent boat handler,” Devlin says.
“And he plays great music,” Miller adds. “Our music sucks.” Devlin mildly protests, but Miller simply smiles.
Devlin slows Puffin to a crawl. Jimenez brings the Carver’s bow up to Puffin’s side, and I step across the bowrail onto the foredeck. I spend the remainder of the day with Jimenez, and everything turns out to be true. Jimenez is a super nice guy. He is a terrific boat handler. And his playlist is fantastic.
As we turn the last corner on the narrows, Petersburg appears to starboard, and the massive snowcapped mountains of the Stikine-LeConte Wilderness rise behind it. In the early 20th century, the town was settled by Norwegian and Swedish immigrants. More than 100 years later, their influence can still be felt. The place is neat as a pin. Even the commercial fishing boats are tidy and clean. Over the next two days, Miller and I walk to the town multiple times to do laundry and get meals or supplies. Each time, one of us says, “I could live here,” and the other agrees.
For the Waggoner flotilla, Petersburg is the final stop. Bunzel’s responsibility as tour guide ends, and every boat goes her own way.
The next day, Seek Alaska Tours owner Rob Schwartz, a fifth-generation Alaskan, takes us to LeConte Glacier in his 33-foot aluminum jet boat. Right outside the bay, he noses the boat up to a blue iceberg. Schwartz gets us close enough that we can touch it and see the elongated air bubbles that have been trapped inside for possibly thousands of years. The color of the ice is otherworldly. It glows like a giant gemstone.
As we cruise up the bay, hundreds of seals rest on the ice floes with their pups. We near the glacier, and the fjord narrows. The mountains get taller, and the ice field gets denser. Schwartz’s son-in-law, Dan Cardenas, gets on top of the cabin and finds a path through the ice. Schwartz slows down, and every time the boat strikes ice chunks, the aluminum hull pings like a giant beer can. Schwartz gets us right in front of the glacier, where we can feel the really cold air. “We haven’t been this close in three weeks,” he tells us.
The glacier’s scale is hard to fathom, but when I look at it through my telephoto lens and see gulls flying in front of it, I realize it’s massive.
A section that is hundreds of feet tall calves off the glacier, revealing a giant swath of blue ice. When the chunks of ice hit the water, they create a set of waves that lift our boat.
We know glacial ice is much denser than the ice that comes out of the freezer, so we’ve come prepared. When Cardenas hears that we have bourbon with us, he gets down on the swim platform and pulls basketball-sized hunks of glacial ice out of the water with his bare hands. They’re too big for our glasses, but Cardenas pulls out a 5-pound mallet, and Devlin gleefully pounds the hunks into smaller pieces. As we sip our bourbons, Schwartz takes us back through the ice field. He noses the boat up to a waterfall and takes us to more icebergs. Devlin takes it all in from the bow with a giant grin on his face, glass in hand. I refill his glass, which still has ice in it, and as Schwartz heads back to town, Devlin says, “This is one of the greatest days of my life.”
The next morning, Devlin fires up some music. Megan Thee Stallion starts rapping, and I think, Wow, Sam is really hip. But then he looks at his phone and says, “Megan the Stallion? How the hell did that get on my playlist?” He puts on Ella Fitzgerald and follows it with the Doobie Brothers.
The tide on Frederick Sound is against us. We’re doing 8 knots through the water, but only 4.2 knots over the ground. Devlin had told me months earlier that Puffin could only do 6 knots. I ask him how she got faster, and he says a prop shop twisted the blades over a period of days to increase the bite.
Puffin is now almost 2 knots faster.
After breakfast, I go up to the crow’s nest to look for whales. For an hour, I see nothing. Finally, in the middle of Frederick Sound, I spot a lone sea otter floating on its back. Devlin heads over, but the otter decides we’re too close and dives out of sight.
Fifteen minutes later, I see a patch of kelp to starboard. I ignore it and spot waterspouts off to port. Devlin pops out of the wheelhouse and says the kelp patch is actually a whale. I look at it again, but there’s no dorsal fin. It doesn’t look like a whale, and I don’t see any evidence of life.
As we close in, two big holes suddenly open up on top of the creature. For a split second, I feel like a deep-sea monster has awakened and is staring me down, but then I realize that I’m looking down on a humpback’s blowholes. Devlin says that sometimes, whales sleep at the surface. We watch it for a while, and then the leviathan slowly dives into the deep.
Devlin takes us to port, where I saw spouts. A dozen Dall’s porpoises pop up in front of the boat. They dart left and right, speed off, dive and return. They keep at it for about 12 minutes, then disappear. Minutes later, we find ourselves in the midst of a pod of humpback whales. Devlin lowers a hydrophone over the side and captures one chirp, but then we hear nothing, even though we spend another hour with the whales.
After taking eight hours to make a five-hour trip, we drop the hook in Pybus Bay. Surrounded on three sides by dramatic snowy mountains, the place is dead quiet. Devlin and Bunzel tell me that Admiralty Island has more brown bears per square mile than any other place in the world. Throughout the evening, I scour the shoreline for bears but see none. At 4 a.m. I get out of my bunk to try again. I spot three seals and lots of mosquitoes, but never lay eyes on a bear.
Off Pybus Point Lodge, four bald eagles feed on filleted salmon skeletons. The eagles have scavenged the remains from the water, and the birds are soaked to the bone. It reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s observation that the bald eagle “is a bird of bad moral character who does not get his living honestly” and is “too lazy to fish for himself.”
There are wisps of fog over Stephens Passage. Devlin fires up the radar and asks for extra eyes to keep a lookout. We can see islands to port, but dead ahead the view turns into a whiteout as a fine mist falls on the boat. Snowcapped mountains appear on the horizon, then disappear again. A pigeon guillemot warily swims by. Porpoises pop up in the distance, and then the mountains come into view again.
While Devlin’s standing at the helm, I notice how even though he is 6 feet, 2 inches, his head barely stays clears of the ceiling. I ask him how tall Bill Garden, the boat’s designer, was. “Five-foot-two?” Devlin says. “Maybe five-foot-three?” I mention that I find the low ceiling kind of cozy. ‘Yeah,” Devlin says as his baseball cap brushes the ceiling. “If you’re a hobbit.”
Then, the smoke alarm goes off. The fan in the Washington stove has failed. Devlin locates a spare and extracts the bad one from the stove, but disconnecting the wires becomes a two-man job. While I shine the flashlight and hold the motor, Devlin tries to disconnect the wires. When he goes to cut a ziptie with the tip of his knife, I suggest he use snips instead. “Quiet,” he says, and I shut my trap. “You’re just like my kids,” he adds, and I chuckle. “And you’re just like my dad,” I say.
We get the new fan to work, but the smoke alarm is still chirping. Miller throws it into the big cooler on the stern, but it continues to drive us nuts. Devlin throws it into the oven to dry it out, but when that fails, he takes it down to the engine room where we can still hear it beeping. I suggest we take a hammer to it. Devlin approves, and I whack it with a mallet. It remains intact, and the light continues to blink, but finally it’s quiet.
That evening, we tie up at a public dock in the middle of Taku Harbor State Marine Park for my last night aboard. The next morning, as Puffin slowly chugs toward Juneau, I take my cup of coffee to the stern, where I plant myself and take in the view. To port, a snow-peaked mountain appears through the overcast. Astern, a dark cloud releases a torrent of water.
Even in these conditions, Alaska is magical.
Two weeks later, I text Devlin as he’s motoring south from Glacier Bay and ask him if he’s learned to slow down yet. His initial response is not printable, so I try again. “What can I say?” he replies. “I’m a busy guy with stuff to do.”
This article was originally published in the October 2024 issue.
