Bubbling With the Spirit of Alaska : Small boat plies Pacific Northwest waters on 5-day cruise from Seattle to Vancouver and Victoria.

As our spunky vessel--the Spirit of Alaska--slipped away from Seattle’s Pier 69, the cruise director invited us to gather on the top deck for bubbles.

Most people thought it was a slip of the tongue. Most people expected champagne.

But Kelly Kelleher, a pert and savvy native of the Pacific Northwest, was as good as her word: She handed out bubble-blowing kits and led the playful salute to the city.

For the next five days--in U.S. and Canadian waters--the mood of summer camp prevailed: family-style meals at long tables for 12; popcorn in the lounge, and no formal nights--even the captain wore a sweater to the Captain’s Farewell Dinner.

The 143-foot Spirit of Alaska is the bed and breakfast of the cruise industry: casual, comfortable, low-key--in fact, no key when it comes to cabin doors.

“We go by the honor system,” Kelleher explained as we sailed from Puget Sound. “If you have anything of extraordinary value--and it would personally make you happier--we do have a safe . . . don’t we, Sean?”

Sean, the hotel manager and almost everything else, grinned and nodded.

I was particularly amused by the no-key policy since my cabin door had jammed while we were still docked in Seattle and I had to climb out through a sliding window. Kelleher didn’t fuss with a locksmith; she cured the problem with WD-40 and a metal file.

From then on, the trip was a breeze. We cruised north to Vancouver and the majestic Princess Louisa Inlet, and then west and south, through Canada’s Gulf Islands to the British Columbian capital of Victoria and, finally, to Friday Harbor in the pine-clad San Juan Islands before wending our way back to Seattle.

The frontier spirit of the Pacific Northwest pervaded the home-grown crew. Each performed several jobs: serving tables, making beds, repairing lines, adjusting a ladder for a beach landing. The banter with passengers was merry.

Our 82 passengers came from a dozen states. A woman from Pittsburgh had crossed the country by train; a West Coast couple had been joined by a sister-in-law from Iowa, and two gray-haired newlyweds from Eugene, Ore., had chosen the Spirit for their honeymoon.

It was a jeans-and-Windbreaker voyage: an easy exploration of wooded islands, waterways backed by the blistering white wall of Washington’s Olympic Mountains, fiords more often visited by private yachts.

The size, shallow draft and maneuverability of our craft allowed us to snuggle up to craggy cliffs and to edge within the spray of a waterfall. It meant we could tie up at Victoria’s Inner Harbour, within steps of the dowager Empress Hotel, and dock by the Granville Island market in Vancouver.

The Spirit has cabins on all four decks. Three topside suites, just behind the bridge, are the choicest locations. These accommodations have a queen-size bed, a kitchen table with benches and windows on either side for plenty of fresh air.

Most of the cabins have twin beds and one wide window. All have private bathrooms and showers. There are no room phones.

If you are claustrophobic--or want to enjoy the passing scene from your cabin--the rooms to avoid are in the 400s on the lower deck. They are bargains and big enough for those who spend most of their time in the lounge or on deck; but the only windows are narrow and near the ceiling.

A chef named Drew worked hearty wonders during our journey: homemade soups and sandwiches on home-baked bread; two choices for dinner each night, my favorite of which was poached salmon. Desserts ranged from brownies to bananas flambe.

As for entertainment, most of it was out-of-doors--sighting birds and animals from the deck, wandering through the Butchart Gardens near Victoria, biking the trails of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, awakening at anchor in a cove to watch the sun rise over an island fringed with Sitka spruce.

The main on-board spectacle was the toilet-by-night show.

“Don’t be startled if you flush in the dark and see a brilliant explosion of green,” Kelleher cautioned. “It’s the phosphorescent algae in these waters.”

Dumb as it seems, most of us got up to see.