Cruising Guides and Pilot Books

Media Guide · Reference

Cruising guides and pilot books are a different category from the literary sailing books covered in the culture section — different purpose, different relationship to their subject. A pilot book is not meant to inspire or entertain. It is meant to get you into the anchorage safely, tell you where the customs office is, give you the approach bearing that clears the unmarked reef, and describe the holding ground you will anchor on tonight. The best ones have been written by sailors who made the passages, felt the swells in the channel entrance, and wrote down exactly what they wished they had known before they arrived.

This category has been disrupted significantly by crowd-sourced online resources over the past fifteen years. Noonsite, Navily, and the Cruisers Forum have collectively undermined the traditional pilot book's dominance for real-time conditions — fees, marina availability, recent hazards, changed anchorage conditions. The pilot books have responded by becoming more authoritative on the stable information: approach bearings, the character of the anchorage, the historical pattern of the weather, the things that don't change quickly. The combination of a current pilot book and current online crowd-sourced data is more complete than either alone.

Explorer Charts: The Bahamas Standard

The Bahamas is among the most technically demanding cruising grounds in the Western Hemisphere — not because of distance or weather severity but because of the complexity of navigation in thin water over frequently shifting sand. The banks are vast, the channels are narrow in places, and the charts produced by NOAA and the NGA do not capture the resolution of detail that Bahamas cruising requires. Explorer Charts, produced by Chris Doyle from firsthand survey, fill this gap.

Doyle has sailed every anchorage and channel entrance in the Explorer series himself, which shows in the content: GPS waypoints for channel entries that the official charts don't adequately represent, depth readings from his own soundings rather than historical surveys, color photographs of the approach to each anchorage taken from aboard a cruising boat, and practical notes on holding ground, swell exposure, and provisioning that no government chart carries. The series covers the Abacos, the Exumas, the Bimini chain, and the outer islands in separate volumes that together form a complete Bahamas cruising library.

Sailing to the Bahamas without Explorer Charts is not impossible — sailors have done it with nothing but the NGA charts — but it is significantly more stressful and significantly more likely to produce a grounding. The books are expensive (each volume runs $40–60) and go out of date for fee information and some marina details, but the approach bearings and depth data from Doyle's firsthand surveys are as current as any regularly updated source available. For the Bahamas, these are non-negotiable.

Charlie's Charts: Pacific Coast Mexico and Central America

Charlie's Charts of the Western Coast of Mexico and Central America has been the standard reference for the annual southbound migration of Pacific coast cruisers — the Baja Ha-Ha fleet and the independent boats that follow similar timing — since 1979. The book is updated periodically and has remained in print because nothing else provides equivalent coverage of the anchorages, port entries, and passage notes for the coast from San Diego to Panama.

The format reflects its origins as a working pilot book: port entry descriptions, anchorage notes, approach bearings, and the practical intelligence accumulated from decades of cruisers making the same run. The prose is functional rather than literary; the information is organized for use rather than reading. Baja California receives the most detailed treatment — the anchorages on the Pacific side of the peninsula and in the Sea of Cortez are covered with the depth that comes from firsthand knowledge and reader feedback accumulated over forty years. The southern reaches, through Central America, are less detailed and should be cross-referenced with more recent cruiser reports on Noonsite and the Cruisers Forum.

RCC Pilotage Foundation: The Offshore Reference Series

The Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation produces the most authoritative series of offshore passage guides in English. The series covers the world's major offshore passages — the Pacific crossing, the Atlantic crossing, the Norwegian coast, the Baltic, the Mediterranean — with a depth and precision that reflects the organization's commitment to firsthand research and peer review. The books are expensive, dense, and worth every penny for the passages they cover.

The Pacific Crossing Guide is the standard reference for the westbound trade-wind passage from North America or Mexico to French Polynesia and beyond — the route taken by hundreds of boats each year in the spring weather window. The guide covers departure timing, passage routing, the critical waypoints and hazards, and port entry notes for the major stops through French Polynesia, Tonga, Fiji, and New Zealand. The historical passage data — what time of year boats have made the passage successfully, what weather they encountered, what routing decisions proved correct — is the most valuable content and the hardest to replicate from crowd-sourced sources.

The Atlantic Crossing Guide covers the dominant trade-wind route from Europe to the Caribbean via the Canary Islands — the route of the ARC and the hundreds of independent boats that make the same passage each year in November through January. The timing windows, the passage routing, the Canaries stop, and the arrival in the Caribbean are covered in detail that reflects the organization's decades of accumulated passage intelligence. The guide also covers the North Atlantic circuit — the return passage through the Azores and the North Atlantic high — which the major sailing publishers treat much less thoroughly than the downwind trade-wind route.

Reeds Almanac: The British Bible

Reeds Almanac is the annual compendium of everything a sailor needs to navigate British and North European coastal waters: port entry data for every harbor in the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark; tidal data, tidal stream atlases, and secondary port corrections; lights, buoyage, radio frequencies, coastguard procedures; weather forecast services and the format of UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency broadcasts. It is updated every year, and the previous year's edition becomes immediately obsolete for anything that changes — which is why experienced British sailors buy a new copy each season rather than using an old one.

The almanac is distinct from a pilot book: a pilot book describes anchorages, approach notes, and the character of a port; an almanac provides the data needed to navigate there — tides, lights, frequencies, and entry procedures. For UK and North European sailing, you need both. The almanac tells you what the tide will be doing at 0600 on Wednesday in Dover harbour; the pilot book (Adlard Coles, Imray) tells you what the approach looks like and where the visitors' pontoon is.

Reeds is now available in digital form through an app that allows the tidal calculations, almanac data, and port information to be accessed offline — which solves the problem of carrying the physical book (significant; each annual edition runs over 1,500 pages) without losing access to the data when there is no cell coverage. For any sailor planning to cruise British or North European waters, a current Reeds is non-negotiable.

Noonsite: The Crowd-Sourced World Guide

Noonsite.com was created as the world's continuously updated cruising guide — the resource that the traditional pilot books could not be because they are updated annually at best and printed years before a sailor uses them. Noonsite relies on cruisers reporting their experiences in real time: current entry fees, customs and immigration procedures, marina conditions, recent hazards, and anchorage reviews from sailors who were there last month rather than the editor who visited during research two years ago.

For anything that changes frequently — customs fees, required documents, the name of the officials who are helpful versus difficult, marina fuel prices, visa requirements — Noonsite is the right first stop, not the pilot book. For anything stable — the approach bearing, the sea character, the historical weather patterns — the pilot book remains the authoritative source. Using both is the correct protocol; relying on either alone produces predictable problems.

Noonsite's coverage is global but uneven. Popular cruising grounds — the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Pacific route stops — are covered in detail, with recent updates from the busy cruising seasons. Remote destinations, off the standard cruising circuits, may have last updates from years ago. The gap between a destination's popularity and the freshness of its Noonsite data is a reliable guide to how crowded you will find it.

Navily and Cruisers Forum: Anchorage and Marina Intelligence

Two crowd-sourced resources have become nearly essential alongside the traditional pilot books: Navily for anchorage and marina reviews, and the Cruisers Forum for the accumulated discussion of specific passages, ports, and problems.

Navily functions as a GPS-enabled anchorage guide: tap on any anchorage and read reviews from sailors who have anchored there, with depth reports, holding quality notes, swell exposure assessments, and warnings about changed conditions. The system works best in popular cruising areas where recent reviews exist; in less-traveled areas, the reviews may be sparse or absent. For the Caribbean and Mediterranean — the most densely reviewed regions — Navily has effectively replaced the printed anchorage guide for the majority of stops.

The Cruisers Forum is the largest English-language sailing discussion community online, with dedicated subfora for every major cruising region and thousands of threads documenting specific passage experiences, port entry experiences, equipment failures, and cruising logistics. Searching the Cruisers Forum before a passage — for the specific anchorage, the specific approach, the specific customs post — retrieves accumulated community experience in a format that the pilot books don't provide. The information is unfiltered and occasionally contradictory, which requires some judgment to parse; but the volume of firsthand experience available is larger than any other single source.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are Explorer Charts and why are they considered non-negotiable for Bahamas cruising? Explorer Charts, produced by Chris Doyle from firsthand survey, fill the gap between NOAA charts and the resolution of detail that Bahamas navigation requires. Doyle has sailed every anchorage in the series himself, providing GPS waypoints for channel entries not adequately represented on official charts, depth readings from his own soundings, color photographs of approaches from a cruising boat, and practical notes on holding ground and provisioning. Sailing to the Bahamas without Explorer Charts is significantly more stressful — the NGA charts do not capture the bank complexity that Bahamian cruising demands. Each volume runs $40–60 and the approach bearings remain accurate even as fee information goes stale.

What does the RCC Pilotage Foundation Pacific Crossing Guide cover? The Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation's Pacific Crossing Guide is the standard reference for the westbound trade-wind passage from North America or Mexico to French Polynesia and beyond — the route taken by hundreds of boats each year in the spring weather window. The guide covers departure timing, passage routing, critical waypoints and hazards, and port entry notes for major stops through French Polynesia, Tonga, Fiji, and New Zealand. The historical passage data — what time of year boats have made the passage successfully, what weather they encountered, what routing decisions proved correct — is the most valuable content and hardest to replicate from crowd-sourced sources.

What is Reeds Almanac and what does it contain that a pilot book does not? Reeds Almanac is the annual compendium for British and North European coastal waters, covering port entry data for every harbor in the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark; tidal data and secondary port corrections; lights, buoyage, radio frequencies, and coastguard procedures. It is distinct from a pilot book: a pilot book describes anchorages and port character; the almanac provides the data needed to navigate there — tides, lights, and entry procedures. For UK and North European sailing you need both. Reeds is now available as an offline app, solving the problem of carrying a 1,500-page annual volume.

What is Noonsite and how does it complement traditional pilot books? Noonsite.com is a continuously updated cruising guide relying on cruisers reporting experiences in real time: current entry fees, customs and immigration procedures, marina conditions, recent hazards, and anchorage reviews from sailors who were there last month rather than an editor who visited during research two years ago. For anything that changes frequently — customs fees, required documents, marina fuel prices, visa requirements — Noonsite is the right first stop. For anything stable — approach bearings, sea character, historical weather patterns — the pilot book remains authoritative. The combination of a current pilot book and current Noonsite data is more complete than either alone.

What is Charlie's Charts and which coast does it cover? Charlie's Charts of the Western Coast of Mexico and Central America has been the standard reference for the annual southbound migration of Pacific coast cruisers — including the Baja Ha-Ha fleet — since 1979. The book covers anchorages, port entries, approach bearings, and practical intelligence from the coast from San Diego to Panama. Baja California receives the most detailed treatment; the southern Central American reaches are less detailed and should be cross-referenced with recent cruiser reports on Noonsite and the Cruisers Forum. The format is functional rather than literary: organized for use at anchor rather than reading ashore.