Beer in the Bilges and Best Anchorages to Name a Few
Best Anchorages of the Inside Passage, 2nd Edition – British Columbia’s South and Central Coast From the Gulf Islands to Beyond Cape Caution by Anne Vipond and William Kelly, $39.95.
If exploring new anchorages is how you choose to cruise, Best Anchorages of the Inside Passage may already be your go-to West Coast cruising guide. And if you’ve joined the growing number of cruisers venturing north of Desolation Sound and Cape Caution, you’ll want to pick up the latest edition of Best Anchorages, published this fall.
Authors Anne Vipond and William Kelly have expanded their guide to include the Central Coast waters north of Cape Caution to Bella Bella. Best Anchorages now offers comprehensive coverage of anchorages and waterways in Fitz Hugh Sound, Rivers Inlet, Hakai Recreation Area and Queens Sound. It also updates its coverage of the Gulf Islands, Sunshine Coast and Desolation Sound, as well as anchorages around Johnstone Strait, Blackfish Sound and the Broughton Archipelago. You’ll find details here on the best beaches, hiking trails, history and native culture, anchoring tips, flora and wildlife for more than 225 anchorages.
Drawing on their 30 years’ experience on the Inside Passage, Vipond and Kelly provide tested piloting tips and local knowledge for all of the tidal passes, straits and capes you will encounter as you head north, as well as details on major ports and marinas. The guide contains more than 120 maps and over 450 colour photos and illustrations. It should make a great armchair read this winter, as you dream about next summer’s destinations.
www.oceancruiseguides.com/guides/best/
Puget Sound – A Boater’s Guide by Anne and Laurence Yeadon-Jones, $49.95.
Canucks who have cruised in Washington State’s Puget Sound will know that while it resembles our home waters, it’s different in a friendly, fascinating way. This addition to the Dreamspeaker series of cruising guides, published this fall, is ready to help you navigate the sound’s maze of waterways and discover its dozens of welcoming harbours, villages, ports, parks and marinas.
The design and content will be familiar to Dreamspeaker readers, with one important exception: its new horizontal format is designed to be computer tablet-friendly, a sign of the times, for sure. The authors tour through 110 destinations from Port Townsend to Olympia, including Hood Canal and Lake Washington, with 130 detailed, hand-drawn colour charts of ports, marinas and waterways, accompanied by approach waypoints and directions, anchoring recommendations, local piloting knowledge, and essentials on charts, marinas, services and local attractions. Descriptions of places to explore, shop and dine are informal and fun, and the emphasis is on discovering both well-known and little-known attractions.
Puget Sound packs tons of information into its user-friendly pages and should make a great starting point if you’d like to explore the sound for yourself – or you need a reminder of what a welcoming destination it can be.
www.dreamspeakerguides.com/Puget-Sound.html
Beer in the Bilges by Alan Boreham, Peter Jinks and Bob Rossiter, $24.95.
The subtitle of this book is “Sailing Adventures in the South Pacific” and that sums it up well. This self-published and very readable memoir is a compilation of the adventures of three guys who cruised back in the early 1980s. Sailing memoirs are always great fun – the good times stand out and that is what the three writers set out to chronicle. Rossiter writes about a trip to Hawaii and New Zealand with actor Hal Holbrook and crew, Jinks about his trip from Australia to Tonga and eventually to Samoa, and Alan Boreham, from Vancouver to Hawaii. The three met on an aborted trip from Samoa to Tahiti in a 55’ gaff-rigged ketch built in 1928, Ron of Argyll, a wooden boat that refused to stop leaking.
A few episodes strain belief, such as a man pulling himself back to a life raft with a fishing line in rough conditions, and the back-slapping, alcohol-fueled dialogue sounds a little forced at times. But the men obviously remain good friends and the book captures a carefree time of life when the veneer of age hasn’t quite shut out the glow of youth. Their enthusiasm and exuberance come through clearly.
South Islander – Memoirs of a Cruising Dog by Amanda Spottiswoode, illustrations by Molly March, $39.99
If you cruise with dogs – or would like to know what you’re missing by not cruising with dogs – this is the book for you. In fact, South Islander is several books in one witty, pleasurable package. It’s a memoir of 12 seasons of cruising the BC coast aboard a homebuilt wooden sailboat: the author, her husband and two Jack Russell terriers. It’s an informal but informative guide to destinations and waters from the San Juans to north of Desolation Sound. Best of all for those of us who cruise with canines, it captures the lasting pleasures and occasional trials of the experience – and it closes with 31 exquisite maps by illustrator Molly March of the coast’s best and most interesting places to unleash the hounds. You may already know many of the places and walks described here, but Amanda Spottiswoode’s fresh, intimate take reveals them to you in a new light. The next time you load up the dog bed, leash and treats, add South Islander to your cruising kit.
