Book Review: The Pacific Crossing Guide

After completing The Voyager’s Handbook I received The Pacific Crossing Guide, 2nd Edition, by Michael Pocock and Ros Hogbin, for Kindle as a Christmas gift and started reading it immediately.  It’s much smaller than the Voyager’s Handbook but it’s still very valuable.  Whereas The Voyager’s Handbook was very focused on preparation and less so on any particular locale’s, the Pacific Crossing Guide is pretty much the opposite.

There are sections on boat choice, equipment, etc to be sure, but I found that the most valuable content related to understanding the Pacific Ocean weather patterns and making choices about routes and destinations.  This is actually where I feel I need the most help actually.  The really nice thing about this book are the color maps of the Pacific showing various routes, weather patterns, and risks.  Again, I was reading this on my iPad and iPhone using the Kindle Reader, and I was really happy to have a color screen to see these maps.

While I believe that the explanations of weather systems in The Voyager’s Handbook were detailed and accurate, I felt like I could follow the explanations in The Pacific Crossing Guide a bit better.  This could be because I read both books but I’m not sure.  The stories of what type of people were encountered in various countries and islands around the Pacific were particularly interesting and informative.

As the book wrapped up I was trying to figure out where I’d get a better primer for various ports of call around the Pacific when I was pleasantly surprised to find a comprehensive section at the end detailing all sorts of ports including charts and details on what services are available.

As an educational read specifically to learn about trade wind routes, return routes, weather patterns and other factors related to crossing the Pacific, this book is great! and the Kindle Edition is just fine.  However, with the added port of call information at the end that is very useful as a planning reference, I again wish I could have a printed copy.  On another note, there is a good deal of useful supplemental information available from the RCC itself online at (http://www.rccpf.org.uk/)

I came out of this book with a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go in the Pacific Ocean on our voyage, and what routes we would take to get there.  For that alone it’s worth the cost.