Maine and New England Quick Reference Cruising Guide

Maine and New England Quick Reference Cruising Guide: Plan Tomorrow's Run in Minutes

The Maine and New England Quick Reference Cruising Guide is a fast-scan, topic-tabbed reference that answers the questions a cruiser actually asks on this coast: where can I anchor tonight that's protected from the wind, where's the next fuel or pump-out, how to time the bridges and the Cape Cod Canal, and can a yard here haul my boat. It covers the coast from Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod north through New Hampshire to Eastport, Maine, at the Canadian border, the whole Downeast run in one book. Everything is arranged by topic and then by location from south to north, so you land on the answer in seconds, whether you're planning tomorrow's run at anchor or changing the plan underway, instead of piecing it together from charts, apps, and narrative guides.

Few coasts ask you to make as many fresh decisions as this one. Maine alone has hundreds of islands and more harbors than you can count, so you're often choosing a new anchorage every night, and the choice can turn on things that change fast: fog that closes in for days, a mooring field that fills by mid-afternoon, roughly 3 million lobster-pot buoys to thread with no off-season, granite ledges that sit just under the surface, and a tidal range that runs from a few feet in Massachusetts to nearly twenty feet Downeast. This guide puts the answer to each of those questions where you can find it in seconds.

Choose Tonight's Anchorage or Mooring by the Forecast Wind

This is where the format earns its keep. The hardest call of the day is usually where to stop for the night, and on this coast that means an anchorage or one of the many mooring fields, more of them here than almost anywhere else we cover. Plenty of guides tell you which way a spot is protected, but it's a line buried in a harbor's write-up, and you have to read to find it. Here it's a mark in a fixed column: go to Anchorages, run your eye down the one column that matches the forecast wind (N, E, S, or W), and see what the nearby options are. You scan for the answer instead of reading for it, and the call that used to mean working through several harbor write-ups takes one downward glance. The coast's most protected spots are gathered separately under Storm Holes, so when weather is coming you can settle on a refuge ahead of time.

Because every spot is scored on the same set of columns, depth, tide range, holding, current, wake, dinghy access, dog walking, and whether there are moorings to pick up, you can compare a dozen options at a glance and weigh the real trade-offs, and a blank is an answer too, not just something an author left out. Tide range sits on nearly every entry in the book, not only here: on this coast the range is big enough to change the picture, moving the depth under your keel, the clearance under a bridge, and the current in a passage, so it's built into each row instead of being one more thing to work out.

Everything for Tomorrow's Run in One Book

The guide is organized by topic, with tabs, so you go straight to the kind of answer you need and then find your location from south to north. Some of what's here you won't find laid out this way anywhere else, storm holes gathered into a single list, free town docks with their stay limits, and haulout yards sorted by the beam and length they can actually lift:

• Anchorages & moorings: protection by direction, depth, tide range, holding, current, wake, dinghy access, dog walking, moorings, and Active Captain names.
• Storm holes: the best-protected water on the coast, in one section, so you can line up a heavy-weather refuge before a front arrives instead of hunting for one once it's on top of you.
• Inlets & canals: tide range, current, and notes for the passages that hinge on timing, from the Cape Cod Canal to the Piscataqua and the Downeast reaches where the current runs hard.
• Free docks: depth, tide range, and stay limits, so you can tie up for free for a meal ashore, a few hours in town, or overnight where it's allowed.
• Bridges: clearance, tide range, VHF channel, and schedule and contact.
• Services: fuel (diesel and gas), Dockwa, slips, moorings, pump-out, showers, laundry, groceries with distance, propane, marine supply, and launch service, with VHF and phone.
• Navigation alerts: fog, lobster pots, submerged ledges, shoaling, and other caution areas, with the nature of each problem spelled out.
• Haulouts & boatyards: travel-lift capacity, maximum beam and length, whether DIY work is allowed, and whether you can stay aboard, so you can find a yard that fits your boat, and, if you want to do your own work or live aboard while you're on the hard, one of the few that lets you.
• Dredging and sound signals: how to read and pass a working dredge safely, and what the horn and whistle signals mean.

Anchorage Names That Drop Straight Into Your Navigation App

All anchorage names in the guide are Active Captain names, so they overlay directly on the navigation app you already use, including Garmin, Navionics, and Aqua Map. Find an anchorage in the guide, search the same name in your app, and go straight to it. The guide feeds the tools already on your boat rather than competing with them, pulling the scattered details into one place you can scan.

A Brand-New Guide, Verified From Scratch for 2026

This is a brand-new guide, and every entry in it was confirmed from scratch for this first edition: through personal cruising experience, direct phone calls to marinas, boatyards, harbormasters, and bridge tenders, company websites, charts, and Local Notices to Mariners. Reports from other boaters are added only when they can be independently verified. The door is held open for late changes right up until the edition uploads to the printer, so nothing known to be out of date goes to press, and a banner on the cover tells you when the information was last confirmed, April 2026 for this edition, so you can see at a glance how current your copy is.

A Fast Reference, Not a Replacement for Your Charts

There are no chartlets, by design. Tables you can scan beat pages of narrative when you need one fact in a hurry. The guide rides alongside the charts, chartplotter, and nav apps you navigate with: for the day-to-day decisions, anchorage, fuel, docks, bridges, services, and haulouts, it's the reference you reach for first. It's a quick-reference companion to the tools you navigate with, not a replacement for them.

A Spiral-Bound Book Built for the Cockpit

This is the spiral-bound print edition: 8.5" x 5.5", with lay-flat binding on heavyweight, glare-free paper and durable topic tabs, so it opens flat on the chart table or your lap and stands up to sun and salt air. Plan tomorrow's run at the nav station, then keep it at the helm for quick answers underway, with no power, signal, or screen to squint at.

Details

• Coverage: from Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod north through Massachusetts Bay and Boston, New Hampshire (Portsmouth), and the entire Maine coast to Eastport at the Canadian border. It does not cover Long Island Sound, Connecticut, or Rhode Island and Narragansett Bay.
• Best for: cruisers planning the next day's run on the Maine and New England coast, cruisers who need to change plans on the fly and find the next option fast, and anyone heading Downeast who wants the day-to-day answers in one place.
• Organization: by topic with tabs, then by location from south to north.
• Sections: Anchorages & Moorings, Storm Holes, Inlets & Canals, Free Docks, Bridges, Services, Nav Alerts, Haulouts, Dredging, Horns.
• Format: spiral-bound print, 8.5" x 5.5", lay-flat binding on heavyweight, glare-free paper.
• Edition: 2026 edition (first edition), cover dated April 2026.
• Authors: Larry Webber and Carolyn Shearlock.