Cruising guides

L

Larry Patrick

New member
Now that winter is ahead,thinking of buying some guides for future trips. Maybee Chesapeake to Florida ICW,or others. What guides do you recommend? Someone gave me part of the erie canal,enjoyed studying it,since we did boat in that area 2yrs ago.
 
Since that is part of the "great loop" you may find "Honey lets Buy a boat" interesting. Also sone of the blogs of Loopers, including the recent one of Derrick Baan ]Book, or Blog (look down the right margin to click on the day by day--pretty close to what is in the book)

Cruising guide to Chesapeake..

There is the Atlantic Waterway Guide: Atlantic Waterway guide/ There are many waterway guides on this page, plus all of the skipper Bob series--which are good.

Cruisers net, is great to subscribe to, and they have published a cruising guide.

That should get you started. There also is a mile by mile book on the ICW--I'll find the link to that--not sure how up to date it is. This is not it, but has a lot of good info for a first time cruiser doing this.

Have fun, but take your time, and go slow--enjoy the towns and people along the way!
 
Larry,

It's not a cruising guide per se, but ACTIVE CAPTAIN provides a lot of cruising information for virtually every area, plus it's FREE and TIMELY.

If you're not already familiar with it - download the program (and database) an learn how to use it.

It may make published cruising guides seem rather dated.

Best,
Casey&Mary
 
Thanks everyone, want to study the Carolina Loop also,any places we may go next. Casey on your trip that was over 100 days,did you buy guides or rely on Active Captain any other sources?
 
I am currently in the middle of "Honey, Let's Buy a Boat," and can second Dr. Bob's recommendation for it, it is a very entertaining read, but it also contains a lot of useful information!
 
We really like the Claiborne Young guides for the Keys and Fl Gulf Coast. Not sure how up to date they are since he passed away a couple years ago. Our guide is 10 years old but had no issues with anchorages. For marinas I use the Internet.
 
Claiborne also ran the Salty South East Cruisers Net, which was taken over by a group of 4 boaters at Claiborne's death in 2014 from a motorcycle accident, his wife died in 2013. They were both relatively young of age upon their deaths. The SSECN has a lot of information, as does the Waterway Guide net--they overlap--and I subscribe to both of them.

To my knowledge no one is updating Claiborne's books. But they remain good, for many references. Claiborne had books on the Gulf Coast, Western Florida, Eastern Florida, Georgia and S. Carolina and N. Carolina.

I had the privilege of knowing both Claiborne and Judy Young, as well as "skipper Bob" and his wife Elaine. The deaths of the primary publishers of both excellent cruising guides where they had done the routes and anchored in the anchorages.

The skipper Bob publications were bought from Elaine by Water Way guides and from what I hear, there are attempts to keep them updated. They were self published in an 9 x 12 format spiral bound format.
 
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