Tranquil, colourful and funky, Genoa Bay is a must stop for West Coast boaters. The day brothers Will and Ben Kiedaisch assumed ownership of Genoa Bay Marina, they inherited outstanding bills, the bank was about to foreclose on the property, and the electricity was in danger of being turned off. “We didn’t know port from starboard when we took over,” says Will, laughing. “We had to learn how to run a marina from the ground up.”  “We didn’t even own a boat and the first tool we had to buy was a bolt cutter because the marina was locked and abandoned,” recalls Ben.

En route to Princess Louisa Inlet, this marine park offers tranquil refuge in a truly spectacular setting. After spending three wonderful days relaxing, exploring and visiting with other boaters in Princess Louisa Inlet, my wife Arlene and I departed, retracing our track back out through Jervis Inlet’s Queens, Princess Royal and Prince of Wales Reaches. The granite mountain slopes shone brilliantly in the morning sun. It was easy to imagine how the intense weight of massive glacier flows carved out these mountains and polished the hard granite to a shiny brilliance. Below the granite walls, thick forest, dissected by waterfalls, descended to the shoreline.

On a high-speed delivery to Whittier, Alaska, a brand-new Coastal Craft 400 IPS makes short work of the Inside Passage and the Gulf of Alaska. In September 2010, I took a call from a pleasant Alaskan, Dick Weldin. I remember his genuine interest in boat design, the pros and cons of features, and his queries and speculation on craftsmanship―I enjoyed our call immensely. I extended an invitation to the upcoming Seattle Boat Show. Little did I suspect that a year later I would be at the Seattle show standing on Dick and wife Jennie’s new Coastal Craft 400 IPS Indigo.

Imagine a place for a family vacation that you will never forget; a lake so beautiful and so vast that you could probably never see all of it. But, what if there was an event that could quickly connect you to a way to explore a lot of it in safety and in an organized fashion?

I hear the surf from the dock at Bayfield Harbour on the Ontario coast of Lake Huron. It is a constant tympani roll. I look west.  Rollers race through the narrow harbour opening. I feel like a pin in a bowling alley.

And we’re heading out into that. Glad I’m not the skipper – smart enough to go with local knowledge. Dave Gillians and his wife, Lynn, are seasoned sailors and know these waters.

Dave squints westward. “Reefed main,” he says. We cast off.

By Mark Stevens   Photographs by Sharon Matthews-Stevens

SATURDAY (1100 HOURS)

The weather is fine: sunny and hazy. A perfect afternoon on the Saint Lawrence.

At precisely eleven hundred hours the call echoes across the deck of "Caledonia", a barkentine tall ship two-hundred-forty-five feet long.

"Prepare to cast off."