The Death of the Cruising Guide Book

[SailingHarmonie]

The internet has claimed another victim, the traditional cruising guide.

I know nobody has ever gotten rich writting cruising guides, it is truely just a labor of love, but SOME profit is needed along the line. Since (almost) nobody buys books anymore, the cruising guide market have collapsed. Even if someone wanted to write one, nobody is going to publish it. No major cruising guide I know of has been updated in the last 5 years. (In popular areas there are a few advertising supported guides, that I have never found useful, but they are the best we get these days).

It seems most people want their information to be accurate, current, and FREE, and are unwilling to pay somebody to collect it for them. Somehow the "crowd" is supposed to supply them what they need without any kind of editing or adult supervision.

As for the crowd, I go along with the observation of the great 20th century philosopher George Carlin, "Consider the intelligence of the average person... now remember, half of everybody is dumber than that..."

None of the on-line sources seem able to hold together for long. People are inherently fickle, and stop posting to them after a while. So the information ages out. Things like Facebook are useless for planning a voyage, although they can help with specific question.

It seems that the only solution (and it is not a good one!) is to wade through dozens of blogs to find the few written by people you trust, and who have been to the place you want to go, who present useful information.

[kayakerChuck]

I STRONGLY prefer printed guides, and try to buy them either straight from the author or locally in the area.

I am happy to pay someone to gather the information for me and to put it in a format that I can use, even without electricity or an internet connection.

Online stuff is great at home or ashore, but I find it hard to use in real time on a boat.

[Hartleyg]

Gee, I think the folks at Waterway Cruising Guides, Waggoner's and Cruising Guides.com might take issue with that.


Hartley
S/V Atsa

[Shrew]

Originally Posted by SailingHarmonie

It seems most people want their information to be accurate, current......

You say that like it's a bad thing. LOL

IMHO, they have lost their relevance and usefulness, and lack practicality.

In reality, the cruising guide is really nothing more than a directory of marine businesses. Sure, they'll sprinkle in local destinations.

Google maps will show me all local businesses, marine or otherwise. Just google "Laundry <location>" gives me what I need. Active Captain is also great for local marine services.. A simple search on a port will typically list the local sites and places of interest.

Businesses open and/or close faster than hardcopy can be updated. Why do I want to keep buying the same guide over and over? Likewise, why do I want a guide where half of the businesses are no longer there?

Storage is an issue. One guide is fine, but it doesn't scale. I don't need a library of guides getting ever more moldy over time.

It's not that one is dead. It's that it's changed from one form to the other.

This makes me think of the scene from the end of the movie "In the Heart of the Sea". The old whaler marvels at the idea of oil coming from the ground {rather than whales}. Whale oil was the primary source of lamp oil, which was the primary source of light. More ironic is the later emergence of electricity and the end of the oil lamp.

We didn't loose "light", rather we simply changed how we generate it.

[Mike OReilly]

I freelanced for Waterway Guide up until the pandemic. They were all being updated annually. Not sure if it's still the case, but I believe so.

Online, and crowd-sourced info, is fine -- where there is a crowd, and you have access to the online world. Where I cruise there are neither crowds, and remote access to the internet is often nonexistent (although Starlink is changing that).

A good old fashion cruising guide is often the only additional source of info those of us who travel off the beaten path have. Although, it's still only an adjunct to good charts and local knowledge.

[Jammer]

I like Waterway Guide and have contributed quite a few reviews.

I don't think that the cruising guide as a genre is moribund. The flow of crowdsourced data has declined. Active Captain, for example, gets more stale every year since few reviews are updated. Marinas and other commercial entities are now more prone to monitor their reviews and retaliate against people who post bad reviews, and there's surely some amount of fake reviews out there just as there are for land-based establishments. I see having curated data as beneficial.

Like Mike I cruise the Great Lakes and tend to encounter neither crowds nor reliable internet access in my travels. The increasing expectation that marina reservations be made online is a real hassle for me.

[jeanathon]

I just received a cruising guide that I bought from Amazon.

[LakeSuperior]

For our trip through Europe we bought new and used cruising guides along the way. It's a "first approximation" to get the lay of the land and figuring out destinations and backup plans. They don't necessarily need to be exact. Typically other additional resources are required like...good charts.

For example, getting into a tiny harbor on the Isle of Skye we talked a fisherman into leading us in as the cruising guide info and map resolution was not so good.

[donradcliffe]

Active Captain worked well at first, and I frequently added anchorages and updated marina data. Then it got sold to Garmin, and the updates stopped. Noonsite seems to also on the downhill slide.

[Shrew]

Originally Posted by Jammer

The flow of crowdsourced data has declined. Active Captain, for example, gets more stale every year since few reviews are updated.

That is the natural progression of a database like that. The business data gets updated by the businesses. How many people do we need to post that an anchorage exists. Once the basic info. is there, we don't every person to update and validate it. The only reason to post a review is for changes in info.

e.g. "Experienced some shoaling close to G3 upon entering".

Then once that is there, we don't need 5 more posts confirming it. Lack or recent updates doesn't negate the relevance of the data.

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by Shrew

That is the natural progression of a database like that. The business data gets updated by the businesses. How many people do we need to post that an anchorage exists. Once the basic info. is there, we don't every person to update and validate it. The only reason to post a review is for changes in info.

e.g. "Experienced some shoaling close to G3 upon entering".

Then once that is there, we don't need 5 more posts confirming it. Lack or recent updates doesn't negate the relevance of the data.

That's true, but perhaps a way to give bits of information a "thumbs up, this was useful and still relevant/correct" mark would be helpful. Then you'd have some more recent confirmation of things, making it easier to tell the difference between 10 year old information that's outdated (but hasn't been changed) and 10 year old information that's still valid (and hasn't been updated because there's nothing new to say).

[MicHughV]

I knew the author of several guide books well. I know that he spent considerable time and effort amassing information for his charts, etc.
I still have guide books from 40 years ago and the information they contain are as valid today as they were back then.

Today's sailor's have their eyes glued to the small electronic box in front of them, instead of using their eyes. That's too say, if they are not busy blabbing on their cells phones.

Guide books are an invaluable source of info to the cruising yachtsman were they to take a few moments to actually read them.

[JPA Cate]

Hello, Sailing Harmonie,

One can look in used book shops (before they disappear, too!) for old cruising guides, and then update and annotate them as you explore. The geography and depths don't change a whole lot in non-volcanically active areas.

Out here, one often finds old cruising guides in the marina laundry on the freebies table, that somebody wants to pass on. I've never seen a moldy one, but some have had some water damage.

Paper charts can still be copied at architects' offices (if they're affluent enough.)

It is one of the places SSB radio nets can help, too. Talk to the vessel(s) ahead of you
about the "uncharted hazard" they encountered...or the great eatery. Explore cautiously, like Cook.

Expect to one day, have to dry a whole bunch of paper charts. BTDT. Electronic everything is super till its complexity led to its not working. But one still heaves to for the night and doesn't enter strange ports in the dark for the first time. We still pay attention to set and drift, too. Just a few yrs. back a former pilot lost their catamaran on one of the FP islands because he was following a contour line with his autopilot, and didn't take into account the strong waves from the SE. IMO the spiffy electronics lead to a false sense of control/safety, to which newcomers are susceptible.

Ann

[rdempsey]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

their eyes glued to the small electronic box in front of them,

Was recently on a boat delivery where the captain spent so much time looking at the chart plotter instead of the narrow channel we were in that we almost hit the shore several times.


I like the paper guides for this reason, over the electronic version. Easy to scan quickly too.

[MicHughV]

My chart books all have numerous scribbles on the pages, as are my paper charts, where I wanted to jot down some or other thing, ie, good lobster hole, good anchorage spot, things I did, etc.
I can take my chart book/paper charts ashore, sit down with other sailors and discuss routes, places, while sipping a pint or two.

Try do that with your electronic screen.