Pilot books, or subscribed info?

[Prairie Chicken]

So now we may actually be able to go somewhere again, I am wondering what the best source of info on ports, marinas, anchorage restrictions, etc. Is. Our old pilot guide & local knowledge is so dated as to be of little use. Do I buy a new paper pilot guide or subscribe to someone like JimB or noonsite? What are those of you cruising the Med finding most worthwhile? I know paper will date quickly but it is easy for planning & to make notes in.

Our needs are for coastal cruising in the Balearics where we are almost always within cell coverage.

Much of my online research suggests many of our favourite anchorages are now bouyed or restricted, and everyplace seems to want reservations days in advance. That's not how we sail & I will be right hostile if that's the way of things here now.


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[ranger58sb]

In our area, softcopy Coast Pilot books (NOAA website), and Active Captain. C-Map charts has some decent marina info, too.


-Chris

[Xlantic]

I have found the Imray pilot for the Balearics invaluable and have not seen anything on-line that comes close to the useful detail and relevance of the information. There a some local pilots that are island-specific with even more detail on anchorages but are expensive and in Spanish.

I find the JimB site to be the best way to do high-level planning for a cruise, better than a paper pilot, but is not detailed enough for day-to-day cruising.

Noonsite has good information and comments but a limited to the major ports and no substitute for a pilot.

Active Captain is a great resource but I find we all need to develop it further for the Med.

Enjoy the Balearics!

[Kenomac]

Chicken lady,

The imray guides are good, but we found just having INavx on our Ipad to be good enough to locate some great places not always on the guide books.

Give me some idea of where you plan to be so that I can email you some of our favorite anchorages. You know us, we never pay to moor. One more thing, Italy is much nicer and cheaper than the Balearics... No crowds, no rolly anchorages.

Do you plan to head over to Ibiza or Menorca?

Ken

[Prairie Chicken]

Imray are what we have now & I like it--but after 23 years I'm starting to think we should splurge for an update. . I just don't know if new would be better than old & all marked up with my notes.

I've registered with JimB Sail & got some useful info there, & found some more on Cruiser's Wiki.

Ken, you know us--we can't go too far these days. We've just gotten back from going all around Mallorca. That was good. We need to be in port for a few days & then will see where the skipper feels like going.

Thanks all for the responses.



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[Kenomac]

Will you be staying around Mallorca? If you decide to venture a little farther to one of the other Islands, I'd be happy to fly over and assist with moving the boat. I'm sure Gary will do the same.

[Prairie Chicken]

Yes, Ken, we will hang around Mallorca for the next month. I very much doubt I could beg, bribe, tempt, or otherwise convince El Capitain to leave the island. I was very surprised when he suggested going round--we never have sailed the west coast before.

I would LOVE to get further afield, but sadly it isn't going to happen on this boat. Maybe next year on Tasman.





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[dlymn]

In the Ionian, we've been using Heikell pilot guide for 5 years. still very helpful. great to flip through the pages, get good info about places (purists might dispute this) and read some history. We use it almost daily. Noonsite, Seaseek etc are useful but not our goto reference.


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[jckb]

Originally Posted by Prairie Chicken

So now we may actually be able to go somewhere again, I am wondering what the best source of info on ports, marinas, anchorage restrictions, etc. Is. Our old pilot guide & local knowledge is so dated as to be of little use. Do I buy a new paper pilot guide or subscribe to someone like JimB or noonsite? What are those of you cruising the Med finding most worthwhile? I know paper will date quickly but it is easy for planning & to make notes in.

Our needs are for coastal cruising in the Balearics where we are almost always within cell coverage.

It sounds as though you need access to The Cruising Association App.
The picture on this page was taken a couple of years ago. There are now so many harbour reports at that scale that you can no longer see the coast lines. Mallorca had 35 port/anchorage pins at the last count, and many of those had several entries.

Snag - only members have access to the database, and membership costs about £125 pa, or £85 for those who don't live in UK. They have a couple of thousand members milling around the Med feeding info into the system, and brilliant forums/email nets to ask for more detail on any destination.

JimB

[Kenomac]

Do you have an ipad with the iNavX or Navionics app? What are you currently using for chartplotting?

Ken

[dlymn]

have a look at flytomaps on ipad or android. great value. our redundancy for the garmin 520

[Prairie Chicken]

I hadn't heard of flytomap but will check it out when I get high speed again.

We have neither Ken. We used to have Navionics but lost that some years ago in one of their "updates". We know the area so well it's rare that we refer to a chart for navigation or hazards but there are many changes to ports, anchoring, buoys, etc. that I was looking for info on. We still have paper charts & our old Imray if we need them. We are just now learning the luxury of having a plotter at the helm.


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[dlymn]

FLYTOMAP | Cartography For Your Mobile

Opencpn is getting better, but getting maps for areas ourtside the US might be an issue.

[Kenomac]

I use inavx to zoom in and find good anchorages along with google earth and Nodeltec Odyssy time zero.

Many times the best achorages are not mentioned in the guide books. And folks who know about them don't like to share.... In the form of writting a guide book.