Recently, some cruisers have reached out to us asking which cruising guides we used for our general cruising and Great Loop trips. Choosing cruising guides can be tricky because the older ones tend to get out of date quickly, and some have spotty coverage or a different cruising style than ours.
Over the last eight years of cruising, we’ve found some good ones that work for us. Finding good educational books on cruising and boat maintenance is also tricky (there are so many!), so I’ve included a few recommendations on those, too.
Most of these resources are available from the publisher’s website and on Amazon.com.
Cruising Guides
Waterway Guide
Waterway Guides are the premier cruising guides for the East Coast, Eastern Canada, The Great Lakes, The Bahamas, and Cuba. We’ve done a complete review of the Waterway Guide (see it here).
Waterway Guides are organized into distinct cruising regions:
- Great Lakes Volumes 1 & 2
- Northern
- Chesapeake Bay
- Mid-Atlantic
- Southern
- Florida Keys
- Gulf Coast
- Bahamas
- Cuba
Each guide features detailed information on marinas, anchorages, and profiles of the towns and cities along the way. It also gives you information about bridges (height, schedules) and locks. The books are well-organized, allowing you to follow along as you cruise.
Waterway Guide also has excellent Web and Mobile apps that contain most of the information. If your device is GPS enabled, the apps will follow along on your route, showing reporters hazards and making getting information easy.
You can check out waterway guides at: Waterwayguide.com or on Amazon.
Skipper Bob Publications
Skipper Bob’s distinctive spiral-bound guides have long been a staple in the Cruising and Looping world. Skipper Bob and his wife Elaine cruised over 44,000 miles aboard both a trawler and a sailboat. They traveled up and down the Intracoastal Waterway several times, completed the Great Loop, explored the NY Canal System, the Trent-Severn, Rideau, and Richelieu Canals, Georgian Bay, The North Channel, and explored the Ohio River to Pittsburgh. Along the way, Bob wrote his guides, sharing his experience and knowledge. On his passing, Waterway Guides picked up the series and continued updating many of his guides.
Some of Bob’s Guides are still the only resource covering some cruising areas. Skipper Bob guides are available for:
- Anchorages Along the Intracoastal Waterway
- Bahamas Bound
- Cruising America’s Great Loop
- Chicago to Mobile
- Cruising the Gulf Coast
- Cruising the New York Canal System
- Cruising the Rideau and Richelieu Canals
- Cruising the Trent-Severn Waterway
- Marinas Along the Intracoastal Waterway
Available from Waterway Guide’s Ships Store or on Amazon.
Quimby’s Cruising Guide
Quimby’s Cruising Guide has been your complete source for marinas and locks on the Inland and Gulf Intracoastal Waterways for 63 years.
With over 9,000 miles of waterways, the Inland Waterways and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) are home to numerous vibrant waterfront towns filled with character and history. For more than six decades, Quimby’s Cruising Guide has been a trusted resource for boaters navigating these waters. Featuring nautical charts, marina listings, and navigation aids, this printed guide is an invaluable tool for every boater to have on board their vessel.
The Quimby’s Cruising Guide is updated yearly to ensure that all of the prior year’s changes to navigation, locks, and marinas are fully up to date. Each year, they also profile some of the towns along the routes and give suggestions on where to stay and what to see.
Available at QuimbysCruisingGuide.com or on Amazon.
Maptech Charts & Guides
It is recommended that you have paper charts as backups if you are using electronics navigation like a chart plotter or iPad Apps like AquaMaps or Navionics. For those cruising in the ICW and inland waters, this is less important as you can typically see land, and the waterway channels are well marked. If you plan to go off-shore, however, having a paper chart backup is critical.
Maptech makes having backup charts convenient by bundling the various maps into convenient regional spiral-bound books and fold-out guides. These waterproof books are printed in high resolution in a large 22″ x 17″ format, making them easy to read while underway.
Maptech also publishes highly detailed Cruising Guides that provide detailed marina listings, local navigational advice, aerial photos, and hundreds of GPS waypoints.
MAPTECH charts are available at MAPTECH.com and on Amazon.
Books
USCG Navigation Rules & Regulations Handbook
Required to be carried aboard any US flagged vessel
12 meters (39.2 feet) or longer!
International Regulations and U.S. Inland Navigation Rules. Updated yearly!
This handbook is a compendium produced by the U.S. Coast Guard Office of Navigation Systems, U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington, D.C, of the International and Inland Rules of the Road and their respective annexes, the Bridge-to-Bridge Radiotelephone Regulations, and Vessel Traffic Management Regulations, as last updated in September 2020 by 85 FR 58268.
The International Rules in this book were formalized in the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972, and became effective on July 15, 1977. The Rules (commonly called 72 COLREGS) are part of the Convention, and vessels flying the flags of states ratifying the treaty are bound to the Rules. The United States has ratified this treaty, and all United States flag vessels must adhere to these Rules where applicable. President Gerald R. Ford proclaimed 72 COLREGS, which Congress adopted as the International Navigational Rules Act of 1977.
Available on Amazon.
Honey, Let’s Get a Boat…
A Cruising Guide of America’s Great Loop
by Ron & Eva Stob
This is the story of a couple’s travels on a forty-foot trawler cruising 6300 miles and 145 locks around the eastern part of North America known as America’s Great Loop or the Great Circle Cruise. Their nautical ineptitude is evident from the beginning, but pulling from their personal and collective strengths, the authors overcome doubt, a lack of experience, and real and imagined horrors.
It’s a must-read for any couple considering doing the Great Loop!
Available on the AGLCA Ships Store and Amazon.
Great Loop Side Trips
by Ron & Eva Stob
The Great Loop is the Interstate; the intersecting waterways are the Blue Highways- the rivers, lakes, and canals that flow into the main stream. Every spring and fall for the last several years, the authors hitched up their 25-foot trailerable boat to the pickup and hauled it to places they’d never been before. Written and published in the style of Honey, Let’s Get a Boat…, Great Loop Side Trips continues the adventures of discovering Eastern North America from the water’s edge. Information on charts, guidebooks, marinas, and launch ramps needed to cruise these Side Trips is included. Side Trips cruised are the St. Johns River, Potomac and Patuxant Rivers, Erie Canal, Little Triangle Loop, Lachine Canal, St. Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers, North Channel’s North Shore, Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, Upper Mississippi River, Arkansas River, Ohio River and tributaries including the Monongahela, Allegheny and Great Kanawha Rivers, the Cumberland River, Tennessee River and tributaries, Upper Black Warrior River and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway from Mobile to Mexico. Contributing writers include stories of passages on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan’s Inland Waterway, and an excursion into the Finger Lakes off the Erie Canal.
Available on the AGLCA Ships Store and Amazon.
Marine Diesel Engines: Maintenance, Troubleshooting, and Repair
by Nigel Calder
Keep your diesel engine going with help from a master mechanic
Marine Diesel Engines has been the bible for do-it-yourself boat owners for more than 15 years. Now updated with information on fuel injection systems, electronic engine controls, and other new diesel technologies, Nigel Calder’s bestseller has everything you need to keep your diesel engine running cleanly and efficiently. Marine Diesel Engines explains how to:
- Diagnose and repair engine problems
- Perform routine and annual maintenance
- Extends the life and improves the efficiency of your engine
Available on Amazon.
Powerboater’s Guide to Electrical Systems
by Edwin R. Sherman
Understand, troubleshoot, repair, and upgrade your boat’s electrical systems
Frustrated by the high cost of basic electrical work but nervous about tackling such projects yourself? Get sound advice and guidance from author Ed Sherman, who wrote and teaches the American Boat & Yacht Council’s certification program for electrical technicians. In Powerboater’s Guide to Electrical Systems, he combines basic theory with step-by-step directions for troubleshooting problems, making repairs, and installing new equipment. Learn to
- Draw up a wiring diagram for your boat
- Locate and identify wiring and circuit components
- Select and use a multimeter
- Choose and maintain battery and marine ignition systems
- Troubleshoot starting, charging, and instrument problems
- Install DC and AC marine accessories, equipment, and electronics. “Ed Sherman’s nationally recognized expertise in electrical systems in boats makes him a natural choice to train and certify marine electricians. . . . He believes, as I do, that doing it right the first time will surely enhance your boating experience.”–C. T. “Skip” Moyer III, Past President, American Boat & Yacht Council
Available on Amazon.
Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual
by Nigel Calder
THE Guide to Fixing Everything on Your Boat! If you are only going to carry one other book aside from the COLREGS, this is it!
If it’s on a boat and it has screws, wires, or moving parts, it’s covered in Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual. When you leave the dock with this indispensable resource aboard, you have at your fingertips the best and most comprehensive advice on:
- Battery technologies, including recent developments in lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells
- 12- and 24-volt DC systems
- Electric and hybrid propulsion
- How to radically improve the energy efficiency of most boats
- Corrosion, bonding, and lightning protection
- Generators, inverters, battery chargers, wind and water generators, and solar power
- Electric motors and electric lights
- Marine electronics, including networking systems, antennas, and RFI
- Diesel engines
- Transmissions, shaft brakes, and propellers
- Refrigeration and air-conditioning
- Tanks, plumbing, and through-hulls
- Pumps and watermakers
- Steering, autopilots, and wind vanes
- Stoves and heaters
- Winches, windlasses, and bow thrusters
- Spars, rigging, and roller reefing
Available on Amazon.
Captain Ron
The Quintessential Cruisers Movie!
Screen favorite Kurt Russell (VANILLA SKY, STARGATE) teams up with funnyman Martin Short (FATHER OF THE BRIDE I&II, JUNGLE2JUNGLE) in an outrageously wild comedy that’s sure to drive you overboard!
Russell plays hilariously laid-back Captain Ron — a vagabond seaman who charts a course for comedy when he skippers the newly inherited Caribbean yacht of corporate executive Martin Harvey (Short) and his family!
With his dubious nautical skills, Captain Ron takes the helm and creates wave after wave of hilarity as he leads the Harveys on a wildly amusing oceanic voyage in their dilapidated sailing vessel, all the while driving well-meaning Martin Harvey off the deep end!
Available on DVD, VHS, or Streaming on Amazon.
What is your go-to cruising guide or book?
Let us know in the comments below! 
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