Waggoner Cruising Guide

 

From south Puget Sound to Glacier Bay and Skagway, Alaska including the marine waters of British Columbia, this popular annual guide—called the “bible for Northwest cruising”— provides detailed information about marinas, marine parks, fuel docks, U.S./Canada border crossings, customs, VHF radio requirements, and much more.

 

Popular cruising areas covered:

  • Puget Sound
  • Hood Canal
  • San Juan Islands
  • Canadian Gulf Islands (including Victoria)
  • Vancouver and Fraser River
  • Howe Sound
  • Princess Louisa Inlet
  • Desolation Sound
  • Johnstone Strait and adjacent waterways
  • North Coast of British Columbia
  • Queen Charlotte Strait and adjacent waterways
  • West Coast of Vancouver Island
  • Haida Gwaii
  • Southeast Alaska to Glacier Bay and Skagway
  • Inside Passage North to Glacier Bay and Skagway, Alaska

About the Waggoner Cruising Guide

Easy-to-Use Format

The Waggoner is an easy reference to use. To find the page you need, turn to the index, table of contents, or the locator maps throughout the book. Reference Maps for each area are listed right up front in the chapters. Waggoner’s detailed listings of marinas and marine facilities are logically organized and updated each year. Text and listings are complemented by harbor maps, maps, and more maps.

Advocacy

Waggoner acts as an advocate for causes that benefit both the boater and the environment. Documented eelgrass is mapped in anchorage areas on Waggoner maps so that boaters know where it is best to anchor without disturbing eelgrass. The Waggoner Guide includes a two-page list of speed limit zones and no-wake zones designated by cities and ports for the protection of  shorelines, wildlife, and safety; these zones are not shown on nautical charts. Transiting rapids, narrow passages, and helpful instruction for transiting the Ballard Locks are examples of the valued information found in the Waggoner Cruising Guide.

Boaters Love Our Maps

The Waggoner’s maps illustrate the coverage of each chapter, harbors, and individual marinas. The overview maps show the locations of fuel. The maps show where and how to find marinas, marine parks, and anchorages, taking the anxiety out of entering a harbor for the first time.

Maps of individual marinas detail the entrances, dock layout, and location of guest moorage. Marina dock layout maps label dock numbers/letters and slip number ranges. Generally, if it’s not obvious where to find and how to get into your assigned moorage slip, the Waggoner provides a detailed marina map.

A Good Read

The Waggoner is full of navigation tips, weather lore, anchoring ideas, local knowledge, and things to do. While much of the text is serious, some is written with humor. It also includes stories and history.

Annual Theme

Each year’s edition of the Waggoner highlights a chosen theme of interest to boaters. Special articles for the year’s nautical theme are found throughout chapters of the guidebook. Past themes include Maritime Explorers, the Foodie Experience, Destinations of Historic Significance, Wild About Wildlife (facts, descriptions and captivating pictures of Pacific Northwest wildlife (whales, bears, foxes, and porpoise) and Competitive Boating Events (such as Tug Boat Race, Race To Alaska, to name a few.)

Sidebar Features

Sidebar features and descriptions explain

  • tide-rips
  • reversing tidal rapids
  • stern-tie lines
  • new power stanchions
  • and more

Northwest Boating

These stories are intended to entertain but also instruct, giving an “insider’s look” at hazards, joys, and just plain facts of Northwest boating.

“We’ve been boating for 25 years. Best guide we’ve ever found.”
Gary & Joyce Clyde, Kirkland, WA

Our Mission

The Waggoner Cruising Guide mission is to provide essential boating information for Northwest waters and to display it in an easy-to-use, entertaining format. We encourage all boaters, regardless of experience, to explore these beautiful Northwest waterways. With the right information, anyone with a boat and the piloting skills can do it.

The first edition of the Waggoner Cruising Guide was published in the spring of 1994. The book wasn’t very thick, and it covered only Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, and the Canadian Gulf Islands. It lacked many photos and had only a few maps.

The History of the Waggoner Name

About 1584, the Dutch Pilot Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer published a volume of navigational principles, tables, charts, and sailing instructions, which served as a guide for other such books for the next 200 years.

Waggoner Guide

The Waggoner Guide has been guiding boaters to spectacular Northwest destinations since 1994. From Olympia, WA to Ketchikan, AK, the guide is referred to by boaters as The Bible for Northwest Cruising.

Mark Bunzel

 

Mark is the Editor and Publisher of the annual Waggoner Cruising Guide and the co-author of Cruising the Virgin Islands. He is also the Publisher at Fine Edge Publishing with responsibility for all publishing, business affairs, and marketing. He has been boating in the Pacific Northwest for over thirty years.

Mark’s boating experience began in Ocean City, New Jersey, where at the age of 15 he started working in a marina learning how to repair boats and engines. During this period, he raced both power and sailboats in the waters around Ocean City.

He has always enjoyed boating and while working in the corporate world he annually would charter in the San Juan Islands and British Columbia as well as other places around the world including the Caribbean, the Bahamas, the Greek islands, Honduras, Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay area.

In 2002, while in the middle of a successful professional career as a business strategy and marketing consultant for companies such as IBM, Apple, Intel and many of the major media companies in the world, Mark elected to make a career and life-style change and moved from Los Angeles and Silicon Valley to the Pacific Northwest and Anacortes, Washington.

Looking for a new career, which would combine his business experience with his interest in boating, he discovered and purchased Fine Edge Publishing and the Exploring Series of books and maps by Don and Réanne Douglass. He immediately expanded the Fine Edge line of products through the development of new nautical titles and the acquisition of the U.S. publishing and distribution rights for the popular Dreamspeaker series of six cruising guides covering the northwest and British Columbia waters.

Fine Edge now provides distribution of cruising and boating books and maps, how to and reference books, stories of life and boating in the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and Alaska, seafood cookbooks, children’s book, and more to bookstores, marinas, and through the online bookstore.

Mark then expanded the reach of Fine Edge into the Caribbean with the first new cruising guide for the Virgin Islands in 15 years, Cruising the Virgin Islands, as co-author with the late Joe Russell. The 1st edition of this book was a sellout success. The expanded 2nd edition, and a new Virgin Islands Trip Planning Map, continues to be a big success and the book is now the standard guide for most of the major charter companies in the Virgin Islands.

In 2011, Mark acquired the rights to the annual Waggoner Cruising Guide, the most popular cruising guide in the Northwest and British Columbia, often referred to as—the “bible” for Northwest cruising. A few years later, he purchased Chyna Sea Ventures, the publisher of Ports and Passes, expanding the offering of the best cruising guides and nautical books and maps in the region.

Mark spends each summer visiting over 175 marinas, coastal towns, and anchorages for the most current information for northwest yachts and cruisers. The Waggoner Guide now covers Olympia, WA to Ketchikan, Alaska

In addition to publishing, Mark started Fine Edge Nautical Seminars, presenting nautical training and information courses at the Seattle Boat Show through Seattle Boat Show University, which he founded, Cruisers College courses in Anacortes, WA with Mike and Lynette Beemer and Skagit Valley Community College, as well as, other seminars including = the annual Cruising the Inside Passage and Alaska, a 3 day seminar presented each spring.

Mark also does photo assignments and writes magazine articles on exciting cruising destinations that have been published in Power Cruising, Pacific Yachting, Latitudes and Attitudes, Soundings, and Dockside. He is a contributor to Northwest Yachting Magazine. Charter cruising assignments have taken him to Kodiak, Alaska, Southeast Alaska, Haida Gwaii, Baja, the canals of France, and up the Intracoastal Waterway from Florida to Annapolis. In 2006, Mark lead the first American crew to charter cruise the coast of Vietnam, which was chronicled in several magazines.

As the principal owner at Burrows Bay Associates Mark provides Marketing, Strategy and Business Architecture consulting services to marinas, yacht builders and companies in the boating business, real estate developers, and luxury goods companies.

Mark Bunzel’s Bio

Mark holds a U.S. Coast Guard Masters license with endorsements for towing and sail, and is a NAUI certified scuba diver. In addition to boating, Mark is an instrument rated, twin-engine private pilot with over 2000 hours of flight time. He is a long distance cyclist, recently completing his second Seattle to Portland (STP) cycling event. He is the 2011 President of the Anacortes Chamber of Commerce, the founder of the Anacortes Library Maritime Speakers Program and a leader of the Anacortes Futures Project to develop the plan for Anacortes in 2025. Mark is a past trustee of the Northwest Marine Trade Association (NMTA) and is the Chairman of the NMTA’s Boat Show Committee in 2010-2012 responsible for planning the Seattle Boat Show.

Prior to his career shift to the nautical industry, Mark’s past included creative and management positions in media, publishing and technology in New York, Los Angeles and the San Jose and San Francisco Bay areas as an award-winning Producer, Director, Writer and Creative Director. He has been a consultant on media and technology for many of the major media companies around the world on the application and new business models for digital media. His consulting clients have included Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Disney, Sony Pictures, MGM, the International Motion Picture Association, and the Weather Channel/Landmark Communications to name a few. Prior to purchasing Fine Edge, he held a senior management position at Intel in their new business division and worldwide internet marketing division. Prior to Intel, Mark was a Managing Director in the Entertainment and Media practice for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Los Angeles serving the publishing, television and motion picture industry and the Vice President of Marketing and Sales for a joint venture of Apple and IBM. He is the author of several books, magazine articles and white papers and frequently has been a speaker on digital rights and media and technology issues around the world. Mark is the former Chairman of the Interactive Multimedia Association in Washington, D.C. and a former member of the Board of Directors for the Software Publishers Association. Over the years he has served on the boards of a number of companies and civic organizations. Mark is a graduate of Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey with a degree in business and communications.