A Cruising Guide to Puget Sound: Olympia to Port Angeles, including the San Juan Islands

Puget Sound is one of the largest and most attractive cruising grounds in North America, more varied by far than even beteran cruisers expect--great natural harbors, breathtaking scenery, and a mild climate that permits year-round cruising. Here is the first comprehensive boater's guide to the almost 2,000 miles of shoreline and more than 300 islands that lie between Washington's capital of Olympia and the Canadian border at Point Roberts, including the San Juans.

Veteran Pacific Northwest cruiser and award-winning author Migael Scherer brings more than 20 years of Puget Sound sailing to this guide, offering intricate, hard-earned local knowledge of the approaches, anchorages, and facilities of hundreds of bays, harbors, and inlets, with annotated charts for many. Here also are insights into local history and attractions, and a rating system that details every harbor and anchorage, how and where to get ashore, and what facilities to expect.

A Cruising Guide to Puget Sound shows you not only where to cruise but how to make your cruise safer and more enjoyable, with a detailed discussion of weather, tides, currents, and the effects of commercial shipping, logging, and fishing.

Migael Scherer is a graceful, meticulous, and observant writer whose love and appreciation of all that Puget Sound offers rings clearly. Here is her personal tour.

From Olympia through the San Juans to Point Roberts on the Canadian border and Port Angeles in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound offers nearly 300 islands and some 2,000 miles of shoreline.

Here is the definitive guide, including

• Tested piloting information, with comprehensive details on approaches, anchorages and moorage, getting ashore, and things to do
• Harbor and anchorage ratings, including beauty and interest, protection, and facilities-at-a-glance
• Advice on coping with tides and currents, weather, commercial traffic, log booms, and other navigational challenges
• Annotated chartlets
• Local history and seasonal highlights

"Everything a yachtsman's pilot ought to be: shipshape and workmanlike in its approach, unusually well written, very thoughtfully researched. . . . I wish you'd put the price up to, say, $1,000, and thereby deter a few people from discovering the anchorages that until now have been quietly traded between friends."--Jonathan Raban

"Simply, every local boater should have a dog-eared, well-thumbed copy of A Cruising Guide to Puget Sound as a permanent feature in the nautical library."--48 Degrees North

"This would be a welcome addition to the library of any Puget Sound sail- or powerboat owner. It could well become a hit among landlubbers searching for that elusive Sound-side getaway."--The Seattle Times

Seattle resident Migael Scherer has been cruising Pacific Northwest waters and living aboard since 1974, when she and her husband launched the sailboat they had spent two years building. Her cruising experience includes four years in Southeast Alaska and three trips on the 1,500-mile Inside Passage. Her first book, Still Loved by the Sun, won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and a PEN/Albrand citation for distinguished nonfiction.