Skipper of the River Queen
If you think your life is idyllic, Diana Klybert might have you trumped.
Not only does she live in North Idaho, but she also has what many would consider a dream job: From Mother’s Day through Labor Day she’s the captain of the West Coast River Queen, an 80-foot sightseer on the Spokane River.
And just when it starts getting slushy for us year-rounders, Klybert takes off for boat charter work or teaching in such locales as Greece, Antigua, Tortola, Maui or San Diego.
Nice work if you can get it, huh?
The 48-year-old skipper, a Coeur d’Alene resident since 1999, sort of drifted into her lifestyle.
A native of Riverside, Ill., and a journalism graduate of the University of Maryland – after studies at Purdue, Oregon State University and the University of Innsbruck – Klybert was living in Portland and editing a magazine for an athletic club when she was invited to join a racing sailboat’s crew.
That invitation isn’t surprising. At 6 feet tall and sturdily built, Klybert certainly has the strength to hoist and reef sails and the heft to help keep a boat upright when it’s heeling in the wind.
She learned sailing on the Columbia River and offshore, then in 1986 moved to Hawaii, where she found work on a schooner.
After earning her first Coast Guard license on Maui, her next port of call was Annapolis, Md. There, she worked as a mate on yachts and joined crews racing to Bermuda and delivering boats.
She was so good at her tasks, she was asked to join the first all-woman America’s Cup crew. Training and then racing in San Diego in 1994 and 1995, Klybert and her 33 teammates on America 3 – also known as “America Cubed” – represented the U.S. in one of the world’s most prestigious international yachting races.
Further peregrinations took her between Hawaii and Southern California delivering boats, then to the East Coast, where she taught learning-disabled kids, and then to Sweden.
There she signed up with another all-female crew, this one training to race around the world. She opted out of that contest, however, figuring that once around the planet would be too long a commitment of her time.
A lover of the mountains as well as the sea, she next got a job with River Odysseys West, a Coeur d’Alene company. Here she met Eric York, a cabinet installer with whom she still lives in a 1905 cottage in downtown Coeur d’Alene with their two German shorthair pointers.
Klybert sold international yachting holidays for River Odysseys, but then was lured away by the Templin Hotel company which offered her a job as marina manager and relief skipper for the River Queen.
“One of Templin’s big draws was the people,” she says. “They’re just like family.”
Then came Sept. 11, 2001.
“Following the attacks, tourism really tapered off,” she recalls. “I love this area and wanted to stay, so I took on some other jobs.”
Those included building a horse barn and reporting for the Coeur d’Alene Press, which she did in 2002 and 2003.
In 2003, she returned to Templin’s and took over as the regular captain when the previous skipper, Don Andrews, moved to Alaska.
Klybert is obviously proud of the vessel in her charge. Built in LaCrosse, Wis., in 1990, the sternwheeler really is a Mississippi river boat – albeit a scaled down version of the 1,000-passenger vessels that ply the lower Mississippi.
Klybert’s River Queen sailed the upper Mississippi out of St. Cloud, Minn., until she was purchased by the Red Lion Templin’s Hotel in 1999, dismantled, then trucked to North Idaho. She’s been berthed next to the Post Falls resort hotel since she was reassembled here.
These days, Klybert is well out of sea spray and harm’s way, perched at the sternwheeler’s helm some 16 feet above the Spokane River’s easy-flowing waters.
“This is a ‘soft’ and warm experience, versus the ‘hard’ experience you get on the ocean,” she explains.
Propelled by two 74-horsepower Cummins diesel engines, the vessel thrums along at 4 to 5 knots on 90-minute cruises up the Spokane River while Klybert narrates the human and natural history of the area over the ship’s loudspeaker system.
Her two-decker is licensed for 110 passengers who – with the help of two crew members – enjoy snacks and full-bar service on daily cruises and full-course dinners on Sunday and Monday evening cruises. From Sept. 9 through mid-October, she offers fall foliage weekend cruises and dinner cruises on Sundays.
Klybert explains the River Queen is also available for charter, and she’s been the venue for many weddings.
After our boating season, Klybert will be off for the winter again, perhaps teaching sailing in the Caribbean or San Diego, or maybe as an instructor in corporate team building for corporations and MBA students in Greece.
It all depends on which way the wind blows.