The Death of the Cruising Guide Book

[Kettlewell]

The Orca is OK, but is missing some odd things like the label "Jetty" that I think is important. Also, the anchorage basin inside Cuttyhunk is a dredged square that is pretty precise as to its edges. On the raster charts there is a dashed line around the dredged basin (hasn't been dredged in decades). You can have your bow anchored within the square in more than 6 feet and your stern outside of the square can be in three feet. Depth ends suddenly!

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by Chris Cringle

I just received my 2024 edition of the “Yachtsmen’s Guide to the Virgin Islands”

Can you please direct us to a source for this?

[lestersails]

Looks like Cruising Guides has updated
Virgin Islands
Windward Islands
Abaco
all for 2024. But I do not see a 2024 edition of Leeward Islands.

They have 2023 editions of
Atlantic ICW
Bahamas
Florida

https://www.cruisingguides.com/books...uising-guides/

Landfall Navigation has a decent number of 2023 and 2024 cruising guides available.

https://www.landfallnavigation.com/n...ng-guides.html

As he said in the Monty Python sketch "I'm not dead yet!"

[jipcho]

While cruising around the globe beginning in NZ in 2003, I bought my first cruising guide (A Yachtsman's Guide to Fiji) when I arrived in Suva. I found it to be invaluable. Nautical charts for Fijian waters are notoriously inaccurate, and the "rule" in Fiji is never sail before 10 AM, or after 3 PM. That's because the reefs (which are usually not where the charts, paper or electronic, say they are) are easy to see when the sun is high, but the glare from early morning and late afternoon sun makes visual identification of the just below the surface reefs impossible. The guidebook contained all kinds of local knowledge, details including hand drawn charts, and info about what's on shore. This was true throughout my voyage. Vanuatu has an excellent cruising guide which cruisers photocopied for each other, as well as a guide on CD Rom with lots of useful info. In Australia, the guides for New South Wales and Queensland are excellent. Some countries had less useful cruising guides, and the best one I encountered was Eric Bauhaus's Panama Cruising Guide. Eric and his beautiful Panamanian wife and newborn baby happened to be tied to the dock on his catamaran when I arrived at Linton Bay Marina, and he was very kind and generous. He signed a dedication in my guidebook, and even lent me lines for my transit of the Canal, which his mom picked up with her car, on the other side!