Pacific Cruising Notes

General

There are several Cruising Guides to crossing the Pacific that give essential information about selecting a route, choosing when to go, and basic information about major ports.

• Pacific Crossing Guide - Michael Pocock (good for route planning and major ports)
• Landfalls Of Paradise - Earl Hinz
• South Pacific Anchorages - Warwick Clay (brief info on many anchorages)
• Charlie's Charts Of Polynesia - Charles Wood (good east of Cook Islands)

We used these guides a lot. Then we had a few more localized guides for some island groups:-

French Polynesia

• Guide to Navigation and Tourism in French Polynesia - Patrick Bonnette

Tonga

• Sailingbird Guide To The Kingdom Of Tonga - Charles Paul & Katherine L. Pham-Paul
• Cruising Guide for the Kingdom of Tonga - Ken Hellewell

Fiji

• Fiji Cruising Notes - Phil Cregeen

Vanuatu

• Cruising Guide to Vanuatu - published on CD

New Caledonia

• Cruising Guide to New Caledonia - published on CD

Caribbean Cruising Notes

We have Cruising Guides place we have visited in the Caribbean with the sole exception of the Cayman Islands. There is no Cayman Islands Cruising Guide, presumably few cruisers go there. Certainly there is not much point if you don't dive.
These are the cruising guides we've relied upon...

The Bahamas

• Explorer Charts (3 books). On the Bahamas Banks, you need depth information more than anything else. These are the best charts we've found.
• Bahamas Guides by Stephen Pavlidis (3 books). These guides complement the Explorer Charts by giving more information on land facilities and often better small scale charts of anchorages.

Turks & Caicos

• Charts by Wavey Line Publishing (3 charts). These charts even show many dive site moorings.
• Turks & Caicos Guide by Stephen Pavlidis.

Jamaica

• Yachtsman's Guide to Jamaica

Mexico and Belize

• Cruising Guide to Belize and Mexico's Caribbean Coast by Freya Rauscher. This guide covered most of what we needed while cruising Mexico and Belize but it is not up to the standards of detail and accuracy we got used to in the Bahamas. 
• What helped most was meeting other cruisers on the way south who could give us useful waypoints. Most of our navigation around Lighthouse Reef, where we spent a month diving, was based on waypoints we were given by s/v Dreamer. (The coral head collision was not their fault! :-)

Honduras Bay Islands

• We could find no in-print cruising guide to the Bay Islands. While in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, we asked around (in conjunction with other cruisers) and photocopied in town pages from a ten year old Nigel Calder guide. Although better than nothing, it was clearly out of date and sometimes less than useful. However, we were happy to have something.

Eastern Caribbean

• Cruising Guide to Puerto Rico by Stephen Pavlidis.
• Cruising Guide to the Virgin Islands by Nancy & Simon Scott.
• Grenada to Virgin Islands by Jacques Patuelli.
• Cruising Guide to the Leeward Islands by Chris Doyle.
• Sailors Guide to the Windward Islands by Chris Doyle.
• Cruising Guide to Trinidada & Tobago by Stephen Pavlidis