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Coasting gently across the foot-high waves of a light tidal rip, our yacht bounces into a lovely little cove with a white-sand beach guarded by sandstone headlands. An eagle wings past; a seal pokes its head up to check out our arrival; as the depth lessens the water turns from tourmaline to turquoise to aquamarine, and the vivid gay colors of chartreuse anemones and sunflower sea stars ripple just below. Our captain pokes his head up. “Anchor here, sir?”

We nod in assent. The boat comes to rest, rocking gently.

Sun warms our shoulders. Gulls cry raucously. Life is swell.

Actually, this is a BC ferry, and my little fantasy is off the mark in just a few respects. The captain didn’t really ask whether to stop here—it’s Descanso Bay, at the north end of British Columbia’s Gabriola Island, where this boat is scheduled to berth at 10:05 a.m., as it does every day. No anchor was involved; the 36 vessels sailed by one of the world’s biggest and best public ferry systems simply nose into dock at 47 ports-of-call, where they tie up, offload cars and passengers, load up again, untie and sail away.

And, of course, this isn’t our yacht. It’s everyone’s.

That’s been the case for a half-century. BC Ferries is celebrating its golden anniversary in 2010, an apt moment to celebrate a public transit system that not only serves the needs of its constituents—and does so rather well—but offers hundreds of thousands of travelers every year the chance to sail into adventure, beauty, wilderness and wonder. These boats sail from one of the world’s most beautiful cities, Vancouver, to one of its most beautiful islands, also named after explorer George Vancouver; through the Inside Passage, past breaching orcas, airborne porpoises, towering mountains, scavenging bears and mysterious inlets; out to the mystical and misty islands of Haida Gwaii; through beautiful seascapes and along one of the world’s most remarkable coastal waters, the Salish Sea. They have carried a total of 702 million people over 50 years—including 24 expectant mothers who gave birth on board. Imagine having that on your birth certificate!

I’ve been riding BC Ferries on a regular basis for almost 20 years now, and I’m one of their biggest fans. That may make me a bit unusual: Like many public transportation systems, this B.C. crown corporation has detractors—mostly British Columbia residents who grouse about such things as occasional tardiness, long lines on holiday weekends, stale hot dog buns and other troubling hazards of modern life. Piffle: Not only do the ferries run largely on time, they are clean and comfortable and have a remarkable safety record: All but two passengers survived the only sinking of a BC ferry, in 2006, and those two victims ignored evacuation orders.

By rough estimate I’d say a BC Ferry has carried me to a third of my most memorable travel experiences. I’ve ridden a bike along the firm sand of Chesterman Beach, near Tofino, on Vancouver Island, on a beautiful February day. I’ve watched my wife and stepdaughter marvel at their first-ever sight of whales breaching while we sailed from Port Hardy to Bella Coola. At Alert Bay, just south of Port Hardy, we admired the world’s finest collection of Northwest Coastal native masks, recently brought home from museums and collectors around the world that had stolen them a century ago. On the Sunshine Coast, north of Vancouver, we paddled kayaks to the edge of a seaside cliff holding thousand-year-old petroglyphs.

Just last month, my wife and I waded into the warm waters of Kanaka Bay, at Nanaimo’s Newcastle Island, on a sunny afternoon. In the distance the snowy peaks of the mainland Coast Range shone ivory. The water was as gentle and fine as silk. The tide was incoming from a deep low, and nudibranchs and sea stars glimmered in rock crevices. Ten yards away, a great blue heron dabbed the water to snatch herring, as unconcerned by us as if we were statues.

I lived on an island for 10 years and have ridden a ferry more than 1,000 times. Not once have I been bored, never have I found myself complacent about sailing the azure waters of the Pacific Northwest to its many lovely islands. The glistening white hulls of BC Ferries ships are, to me, adventure-yachts anyone can ride. I hope we both have another half-century of sailing ahead.

Eric Lucas lives in Seattle. Visit him online at www.TrailNot4Sissies.com.