In my earlier roundup of San Juan Islands cruising guides, I left out one of the most popular titles:

Waggoner Cruising Guide 2007: The Complete Boating Reference, edited by Robert Hale. I recently attended a big C-Dory gathering on Lopez Island, and it seemed like almost every one of them had a copy of this book on board.

Now that I’ve had a chance to look through it, I can see why. Wow! This book manages to do everything well, and I don’t say that lightly. I’m really impressed.

Scope

All of Puget Sound and all of Vancouver Island and everything in between. This is the most comprehensive book I’ve examined. It covers virtually all the areas I will ever cruise in my little C-Dory without putting in on a trailer.

Relevance

Despite the broad scope, the book contains enough information to help you get there safely, get the boat squared away, and have some notion what you’ll do during your stay. Mr. Hale seems to have struck a very effective balance: just enough of the most important information about each place.

Personality

I mentioned this before; I like reference books that aren’t afraid to express an opinion, and where the author’s personality shines through once in a while. Despite the fact that this book has to take a quick, just-the-facts-ma’am approach in order to cover all the destinations it does, you still get a feel for Bob Hale as a person. You learn a bit about how he approaches recreational cruising, what he likes, what he avoids, and why.

Currency

The Waggoner Cruising Guide is updated annually. More frequently than any of its competitors. In addition, the Waggoner website serves as a real-time addendum to the book. The combination of the two comprises a tremendously valuable service, and the content on the website is completely free!

Value for money

It’s the cheapest of the bunch, costing a bit over half the average price of the other titles I reviewed. How can the folks at Weatherly Press managed to maintain this comprehensive reference guide, and update it every year, while charging less than all the others? Here’s how: the book contains advertising! My first thought was “Yuck! It’s like those tacky city guides you find in your hotel room.” Not so. The ads don’t feel particularly intrusive, and often they are contextually appropriate. If you happen to be looking at the section about Fisherman Bay, as I was this weekend, the ads tend to be for businesses located in Fisherman Bay. About 75% of the time, it seems to me, the ads actually enhance the experience of using the book. After my initial resistance, I’ve come to conclude that the ads are a positive feature of Waggoner.

So where does it fall short?

The Waggoner Cruising Guide doesn’t fold flat, lacking the nice spiral binding of Ms. Scherer’s excellent book. So it’s a bit tougher to keep open while using it aboard.

Coverage is necessarily brief; you get more information in many of the other titles. I really enjoy the detail in Scherer’s Cruising Guide and the anecdotes in Gunkholing, for example. Yet even after head-to-head comparisons of destinations both prominent and obscure, I felt like Waggoner would be enough, if I didn’t have access to those other titles.

The charts aren’t as helpful or detailed as those in Scherer or Yeadon-Jones, although this may be intentional. Waggoner’s Bob Hale wants you to use real charts, and he’s admanant about this. I wonder if the maps he includes are intentionally devoid of critical navigational details, so you won’t be tempted to just use the book and leave the charts folded up and put away. Meanwhile, Waggoner’s small marina diagrams provide all the information you need to make your approach and get your bearings inside the breakwater; precisely the point at which the official chart fails to satisfy.

Still…it’s the best

Despite these minor shortcomings, it is obvious to me why Waggoner is the book I see in almost every boat. Overall, it’s simply the best choice. It’s fun to browse, making it suitable for trip planning and fantasy cruising while at anchor or at home. It’s got critical navigational information as well, making it immensely valuable at the helm as you make your final approach. I’ll be buying a copy for my boat. In a couple years, I’ll buy an updated copy, and relegate the old copy to trip-planning at home.