The Channel Islands of California – A Cruising Guide

This is the first extensive cruising guide covering the Channel Islands to be published since Brian Fagan’s Cruising Guide to Southern California's Offshore Islands. Fagan’s book remains to be the gold standard for comprehensive coverage of the Channel Island’s. Frederick’s new cruising guide encourages sailors to use his guide alongside Fagan’s book and has put together a guide that takes a new angle:

“I have taken a completely different approach with writing this cruising guide. I am assuming that the reader not only has Brian Fagen’s “Cruising Guide to Southern California’s Channel Islands” and Marc Hughston’s “Anchoring at Catalina; No Moorings? No Problem” on board but also uses either a traditional chart plotter or an app such as Navionics running on a smartphone or tablet. All of the anchorages listed in this guide I navigated into, around and out of with Navionics running on my iPad. 

I have chosen to just give you the basics regarding the details about the anchorages and focus more on my experiences at the anchorages themselves. I understand why most cruising guides omit personal experiences (as the old saying goes “You can never visit the same anchorage twice”) and only print the known and agreed upon facts. But I have found that first-hand accounts from other cruising sailors have always helped me when it came to not only choosing an anchorage to visit, but what to expect once there based on the stories that had been told to me. There are countless anchorages I have only visited because another sailor suggested it, some of which were not noted on charts or in cruising guides, and I have always been pleasantly surprised.

So this cruising guide is a collection of my logs, photographs and general information that was published for the sole purpose of inspiring you to seek out new places you have yet to see. The islands are waiting, the rest is up to you! “

Frederick’s Cruising Guide to the Channel Islands is packed with 200 illustrations, charts and full color photographs. The guide covers 27 anchorages from 5 different islands with firsthand accounts over 190 pages printed in perfect bound paperback.