Embassy Cruising Guide – Florida

Publisher: Maptech, 2nd ed.; $US ??
Publication Date: 2008

The CA is grateful to the HLR for the area, John Chance, who donated this guide to the library. The Embassy guides are designed for fairly heavy use, being of a good quality paper spirally bound. It is claimed to be waterproof but this was not tested. Virtually A4 format and a good 1” thick, it is also intrinsically quite heavy and therefore needs to justify its place in the navigation area. I think it probably does. Blessed with clear charts and relevant maps, the region covered runs from St John’s River on the Atlantic coast just below Georgia, right round the Florida coastline on its western side through to Mobile Bay in Alabama.. A short chapter on the Bahamas is thrown in for good measure. The general format is familiar. An initial section describes the general approach in all the Embassy Guides and this is followed by information which will help the visiting skipper to the whole area: customs regulations, bridge and mileage are displayed in a range of tables. It draws attention to the draft affecting the planning of routes especially where the East Coast routes tend to mean no boat drawing more than 6 feet is likely to stay afloat and this drops to 5 feet in the Keys and on the West Coast. The detail is important and is set out in each relevant chapter. Of these there are 24. Each is colour-coded and sets out with a chart of the area covered, with clear indication of the sub areas. Four or five pages of introductory text then lead into a standard pattern of port by port detail giving important data for pilotage as well as useful information for shore facilities, chart and bridge data and what to do when you are tied up or anchored. Since there are more than 1300 marinas listed, one imagines there is more tying up than anchoring. The book contains a huge amount of information, most of which is highly relevant to the visiting skipper. The fairly numerous adverts are relevant and add to potentially useful material. – Hannah Hull