Panama

[Aden]

Hi

Can anyone recommend any cruising guide books to Panama. A few people in this forum mention Panama - Eric Bauhaus but its latest edition is 2009.

[Cormorant]

There is a 5th edition, 2014. Not cheap, but available from some third-party vendors on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com//gp/offer-listing/B00RWTR76C

[Paul L]

For Panama Bauhaus is the choice. You can also get the electronic versions of the guides chartlet, which are very handy in the San Blas area.

For the west coast of Central America the online Sarana guides are the best.

The Rains guide has more overall passage planning info.

[Benz]

While it's aging, if you can find a copy of Tom Zydler's Panama Cruising Guide, it is hands-down the best cruising guide I've seen to anywhere. It's geared toward piloting and eyeball navigation rather than GPS coordinate-entry, but it was astonishingly accurate and beautifully made.
Again, there's a lot of civilization cropped up since it was last published, but all the coral and islands are still in pretty much the same places.

[Paul L]

Zydler's guide was very good for it's time, but the Bauhaus guide has effectively completely surrplanted it. I would not want to cruise much of Panama without the Bauhaus guide.
I did find some clear chart errors in the Zydler guide that got copied to the Baushaus edition I had.

[belizesailor]

+100 for Bauhaus!

Indespensible for Panama. Gets my vote for best cruising guide ever, regardless of venue. Exceptionally well done with excellent and accurate cartography. Ive cruised almost all of the Atlantic coast of Panama and only know of one error. Well worth the cost and then some.

[model 10]

I wish it were bigger. The photos are beautiful.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Zydler's guide was very good for it's time, but the Bauhaus guide has effectively completely surrplanted it. I would not want to cruise much of Panama without the Bauhaus guide.
I did find some clear chart errors in the Zydler guide that got copied to the Baushaus edition I had.

If you took notes of the errors, could we trouble you to post them? I like to keep mine annotated in case I get to go back.
The one update I would do is the entrance to the whole Pedregal river system on the south side--Zydler recommends one possible entrance while a local took me through a better one, and there's a lack of clarity about some rocks in the vicinity of the power lines where the river bottlenecks.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Benz

If you took notes of the errors, could we trouble you to post them? I like to keep mine annotated in case I get to go back.
The one update I would do is the entrance to the whole Pedregal river system on the south side--Zydler recommends one possible entrance while a local took me through a better one, and there's a lack of clarity about some rocks in the vicinity of the power lines where the river bottlenecks.

Sorry, but I gave away my Zydler book 2 or 3 years ago. The error was some transposing of island names in the Las Perlas.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Sorry, but I gave away my Zydler book 2 or 3 years ago. The error was some transposing of island names in the Las Perlas.

All right--thanks anyhow. We bypassed the Las Perlas; by the time we might have cruised them we were sick of huge tides and raring to get to the Caribbean. I wonder how the Sail Sarana guide does with the Perlas. Anyone used it there?

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Benz

All right--thanks anyhow. We bypassed the Las Perlas; by the time we might have cruised them we were sick of huge tides and raring to get to the Caribbean. I wonder how the Sail Sarana guide does with the Perlas. Anyone used it there?

The Sarana guides are the best for west coast central America. They only briefly cover Panama west.

[Eleuthera 2014]

Bauhaus....

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Benz

All right--thanks anyhow. We bypassed the Las Perlas; by the time we might have cruised them we were sick of huge tides and raring to get to the Caribbean. I wonder how the Sail Sarana guide does with the Perlas. Anyone used it there?

Originally Posted by Paul L

The Sarana guides are the best for west coast central America. They only briefly cover Panama west.

Bauhuas of course has excellent coverage on the Pacific side of Panama.

[Aden]

We are in Portugal. Probably we can get the Eric Bauhaus guide book when we are in Caribbean next Jan? Is it difficult to get it there?

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Aden

We are in Portugal. Probably we can get the Eric Bauhaus guide book when we are in Caribbean next Jan? Is it difficult to get it there?

Really a shame its not available as an ebook. There are however cruisers who have made unofficial, and georeferenced, copies of his charts.