Cruising Guide to Germany and Denmark

Publisher: Imray, Laurie, Norie and Wilson, 3rd ed.; £32.50
Publication Date: 2006

Would I buy this book if I was intending to cruise in this area? Undoubtedly. Would I buy it in spite of how irritating I find it? Yes, because it describes the area in more detail than any other book in English. Checking the harbours I know, the plans and instructions appear to be accurate. I first came across Brian Navin when using his Cruising Guide to the Netherlands many years ago and I wondered then why it was called a guide and not a pilot. The contents provided the answer; it was neither a guide in the tourist sense nor a pilot in the nautical meaning. This book is better in that it comes nearer to deserving the title Pilot (which is presumably what we actually need the book to be). Where does it fail and why does it so annoy me? Firstly the plans. They have the style of the CA’s Cruising Almanac but unlike it, some have no lat and long scales on the borders, some have conventional scales in metres and some have no scale at all – the ultimate cartographical sin. Most of the plans have coloured lines on them showing the way from the harbour entrance to the yacht harbour. They show that you must pass between the breakwaters and leave port hand buoys to port, etc. Who does Navin think we are? Similarly his style: “The Kiel canal, or rather the Nord-Ostsee Kanal...”. Does any English speaking person refer to it other than as the Kiel Canal? And “København” throughout the book. Does the author tell his friends he’s going to Roma? The introduction devotes a long paragraph to Central European Time in which he says that its summertime is till the end of September. All he needs to say, and accurately, is that in this area time is always one hour ahead of the UK. On Baltic marinas “Mooring is often head to a jetty with crossed stern warps to two stern posts.” Why “crossed”? Not a word of caution to close all outward opening hull scuttles and windows before they are crushed as they pass the posts. On electronic position-fixing “Electronic navigation systems are in a state of upheaval...”. Is he referring to GPS? Etc, etc. One serious omission: no word of warning re leaving the Kiel Canal at Brunsbüttel after a period in the tideless Baltic “Beware of the fast and swirling stream as you enter the Elbe”. The photographs, particularly the aerial pictures, are plentiful, useful and good. – Roger Richardson