Seattle to Alaska in August.... Rough seas Likely?

Hi

We have booked an Alaskan cruise aboard RCCL Ovation of the seas which will set sail on the 23rd August 2019 on a round trip from Seattle... as excited as we are and it being such a long way out still, we want to be prepared. Are the seas in the area always rough around this time of year?

We have taken three Alaska cruises in August. Two were round trip from Seattle and both were very calm during the entire cruise. I hope this encourages you.

My wife has wonderful slideshows of our cruises in the Travel section of her website at the link below. Take a look when you have time. It may give you some ideas of what to expect and how to plan for shore excursion.

Travel Slide Shows

Alaska is amazing! Have a great cruise!

We sailed RT out of Seattle last September 2nd and the trip was smooth for the most part. Captain pushed it a bit from Ketchikan to Victoria and we felt the ship buffeting a little but nothing you could remotely call rough.....

The seas are not predictable. They can be smooth, rough, or most likely, something in between. The roughest seas we have ever experienced in 21 cruises was about 4 hours of throw you out of bed roughness at the entrance to the Straits of San Juan De Fuca, which is where you will be sailing. This was in July.

If you have issues with seas sickness, you need to be prepared every day you are on a ship. The sea moves, and ships move in response.

We did Roundtrip from Long Beach last September and the seas were calm the whole cruise.

CruiserBruce has it right.

It could be rough or calm or in between.

We book a room mid ship and bring something to prevent nausea anytime we cruise.

Keith

What Bruce said. For this question, and anything about weather, there is only one rational behaviour - prep for ALL possibilities! A bunch of delightful stories about the sea being like glass (or horrific tales of the worst waves ever), and even statistical analysis of average wave heights, storm frequencies etc. are utterly meaningless for you on any particular day - at best they bracket the extreme values, but new records get set all the time...

:)

The roughest seas we have ever experienced in 21 cruises was about 4 hours of throw you out of bed roughness at the entrance to the Straits of San Juan De Fuca, which is where you will be sailing. This was in July.

The Straight of Juan de Fuca-----Sure brings back memories, we were in Seattle in August 1954, since my father liked to take his vacation time down there during the Seattle Seafair activities and events. The talk of the city was about Florence Chadwick who was trying to be the first to swim across it. She didn't make it because of weather, if I recall. But I remember discussions about how a person was going to swim across a Strait on which many got sea sick just traveling in a boat on it. "The first recorded attempts on the Strait took place by three unnamed men in October 1933. And then no one followed. Not until August 1954, when Florence Chadwick showed up to give it a go and start the race to be first across."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Juan_de_Fuca

Back to your cruise. Odds are the voyage will be pretty tame. The Gulf of Alaska doesn't often get worked up much before the Autumnal Equinox has passed. If I recall correctly the insurance companies allow the tug and barge outfits to still conduct tandem tows in the Gulf, after or before, they pass Cape Spencer up until October or later. So they aren't even worried about chances of real rough seas until after that.

You will be in the Gulf of Alaska after you leave the inside waters off of Washington State and begin cruising on the west side of Vancouver Island, once you reach Dixon Entrance then you begin sailing in the protected Alaska Inside Passage. On the way back south you also will again be out in the Gulf and west of Vancouver Island. It is in the Gulf that you might run into a little slop but I doubt it. Some cruises, mostly those originating or terminating at Vancouver, also do the Canadian Inside Passage which means you are cruising on the east side of Vancouver Island then connect up with the Alaska Inside Passage, so you are pretty much protected all the way.

Most Seattle cruises go west of Vancouver island which means open ocean and increases chances for rough seas for the first and last sea days. We did a cruise In August and had choppy but not rough seas. But one person's experience is kind of meaningless.

As a result I started capturing cruise web cams time lapse videos for the specific examples of what you might expect (but even with 100s to choose from, you could end up with a completely different experience..

You can click on this link to search Seattle and August to get some examples from a few different years. http://m.youtube.com/user/InternetAgeTraveler/search?query=seattle%20august

We hit rough seas twice on cruises and calm seas on another cruise. On one cruise we hit the tail end of a tropical storm and believe me it was "sit down or fall down" rough. When you are out in the open ocean is where you "might" hit rough sailing...but we've lived to tell about it....and it makes a great story and pictures. If you leave from Vancouver, the sailing is usually smoother.