Boat Books' Guide to Cruising Guides

by Doug Cuming/Sail-World on 27 Jul 2013 Boat Books, every sailor's favourite haunt for that sailing book you didn't even know you wanted until you saw it, have put together a must-have: - a 'Guide to Cruising Guides'. The aim of the guide is to help you find the right guide book with the right advice for your sailing trip, whether you are sailing out for the day or doing a circumnavigation.

Cruising guides can be a valuable source of information on ports, harbours and anchorages as well as local weather, formalities and local attractions. You can benefit from the author’s years of experience sailing the area to take away some of the stress when approaching a new anchorage.

A local cruising guide will introduce you to new anchorages that you never previously considered and allow you to extend your range a little further than normal. Alan Lucas’ Cruising the Coral Coast and Cruising the NSW Coast are the benchmarks for the Australian East Coast providing detailed coverage from Eden to Cape York that should be on any boat along this coast. Rob’s Passage Planner provides additional information for those making passages along the coast. If you are going to the Whitsundays then 100 Magic Miles provides everything you need, whether on a week’s charter, or cruising through the area heading further north.

The Top End has Leslie Richards’ Guides to Northern Australia, and the Western Australia Cruising Guide provides excellent coverage of the amazing Kimberley region as well as the rest of the WA coast. As facilities are getting better and the bureaucracy getting simpler, more and more cruisers are now heading further north to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand where the Imray Cruising Guide to South East Asia Vol 2 is the first pick, strongly supported by the recently reprinted 101 Anchorages within the Indonesian Archipelago. The new fourth edition of the Southeast Asia Pilot is the best choice for those thinking of sailing or chartering Thailand.

For those chartering overseas, Boat Books has a great range of guides covering the prime Mediterranean cruising areas of Croatia, Greece, Turkey, France and Spain. We also have a number of guides for other popular chartering areas such as in the Caribbean and the South Pacific.

For global cruisers we have Jimmy Cornell’s range of books including World Cruising Routes and World Voyage Planner as well as plenty of others to help plan your trip, prepare your boat and determine which route to take. There are numerous guides for most popular sailing areas around the world, but also for far out places such as Terra del Fuego or Greenland.

Boat Books’ Guide for Cruising Guides aims to help you decide what is best for your needs and budget: the first section covers the available Australian guides with their coverage, a description and a rating based on coverage, depth of detail and presentation. The second section includes all the international guides that Boats Books has available.

You can download a PDF copy of the Guide for Cruising Guides at the Boat Books website: http://www.boatbooks-aust.com.au/news/docs/news-current-edition.pdf or contact them via phone (1300 262 826), email (boatbooks@boatbooks-aust.com.au) or visit their Sydney or Melbourne stores.

Boat Books will also be at the Sydney International Boat Show on 1-5 August at Darling Harbour, exhibiting its books and charts, and the Guide to Cruising Guides will available to participants at the Cruising Masterclass.