By David H. Lyman
Editor’s note: Don Street was with us as we planned this story and issue, and although he passed away May 1, 2024, he’s still helping us find our way. Read his letter to the editor in Readers Forum and tributes to him.
With the arrival of the new Doyle Guide App for your smartphone, it’s a good time to see just how far we’ve come in 60 years of finding our way among the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. Today, there are stacks of references we need to check before hoisting the anchor and heading off to our next island. We unfold Imray charts, log onto various Facebook groups — there’s one for every island — and load the weather. Then we see what’s up with ActiveCaptain on our Navionics app on the iPad. We flip pages in the Doyle Guides, or the Virgin Islands Guide by Nancy and Simon Scott. There are others, including a dozen guidebooks compiled by the late Don Street. It’s a lot.
Growing up as a teen in the 1950s, I read adventure stories of sailing in Yachting and Rudder magazines. Books about my maritime heroes: Horatio Hornblower, Sir Francis Drake, and young Jim Hawkins in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island had me dreaming. I learned about scattering carpet tacks on the deck at night to repel unwanted boarders while reading Jack London’s South Sea Tales. In 1966, The National Geographic published Isles of the Caribbean, a book detailing culture and sailing with lots of photos. Now I could see what those islands looked like. I was hooked; these books sent me off dreaming of sailing to the tropics.
It would be 1978 before I finally got to the Caribbean for the first time, on a Morgan Out Islander bareboat charter out of Red Hook, in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. While I’d grown up on boats and had spent 15 years cruising the New England coast on my own 36-foot Alden sloop, Quinta, I had no idea what I’d find once I got to the tropics. On arrival, the charter company gave us a spiral-bound guide, first published by The Moorings in 1974. It contained aerial photos of various anchorages in the US and BVI. With but a few words on anchoring, there was nothing about what we might find ashore. This was to be a DIY adventure.
Street Guides
When I decided to sail my own boat to the Caribbean in 1981, I needed to do some serious research. I found a series of guidebooks and pilot books by Street. I still have them.
It was Street’s A Cruising Guide to the Lesser Antilles, published in 1964, that paved the way. He not only provided advice on the various routes from New England to the Caribbean, he also provided detailed information on every cove, harbor, and anchorage on every island. Street is a prolific writer (he’s authored a dozen books and hundreds of magazine articles and is still writing today at 94); he is also highly opinionated, and with good reason. He’s been sailing in the Antilles for 50 years.
Street first arrived in St. Thomas in the fall of 1956. He purchased Iolaire, a 46-foot engineless British cutter, which he immediately converted to a yawl, and for the next 52 years he raced, cruised, chartered, charted, and wrote about his explorations among the islands. He found his way into the nooks and crannies of anchorages, navigating with a hand-bearing compass and a lead line, and he kept accurate notes. His hand-drawn sketch charts, with approach bearings and navigation directions, were necessary for anyone venturing off the beaten track.
This was a time before GPS or chart plotters. Street was writing for the serious voyager, the boat owner, less for the vacationer. He was less interested in beach bars and French restaurants ashore than in how to get into small coves and anchorages and not hit the reef on the way in. Reading Street is more like sitting in the cockpit with a Heineken or a rum punch at hand, listening to this crusty adventurer spin yarns and provide advice. His books are not only valuable for the content; they are an entertaining journey into the history of cruising the islands.
Seawise, his fifth book, is a collection of Street’s thoughts and advice on every aspect of boat ownership and cruising. Norton published Seawise in December 1979. Amazon will sell you a copy for $50. I recently bought a used copy from Thriftbook.com for $5.99.
The Street library includes:
A Cruising Guide to the Lesser Antilles, 1963, revised 1974
A Yachtsmen’s Guide to the Grenadines, 1974.
The Ocean Sailing Yacht, Volumes I, 1973, II, 1978
Seawise, 1979
Street’s Cruising Guide to the Caribbean, Volumes I–IV, 1980-81
While Street’s guides haven’t been updated recently, his Imray charts of the Caribbean have. Don’s books are still valuable references. If you can’t find Street’s books, his website has a great deal of what he has written (www.street-iolaire.com).
Doyle Guides and the New App
Chris Doyle’s guides to the Leeward and Windward Islands have been around since the early 1980s. Chris, an Englishman disenchanted with UK weather, sailed Sugar Creek, a Colin Archer ketch across the Atlantic, and landed in Grenada in the late 1970s. He skippered charter boats and bareboats, made deliveries, and got to know the islands well. After being pestered by lost bareboaters asking for directions, Chris wrote and published his own guidebook, selling advertising to cover the cost of printing. He sold them by hand, often boat-to-boat, from his windsurfer. He has been at it all these years.
For 40 years, I’ve been using Doyle Guides, since 2022 under the capable direction of Chris’s business partner, Lexi Fisher. I even find the advertisements useful. They put a face to the services ashore. Doyle Guides are markedly different from those of Street, but I still have and use both. The major differences include Doyle’s use of colored sketch charts; more information on marine services ashore; hiking trails, restaurants, and markets. Also, Doyle Guides are updated, with new editions printed every two years.
Much changes from season to season, and the updated printed versions contain a few vintage details by the time they are published. While Doyle himself has retired, he is an advisor to Fisher and stays current with cruising comings-and-goings via cruising groups on Facebook. He continues to sail part time, and writes for various marine publications, including Compass.
Enter the Doyle Guide App
To keep readers informed of changes in immigration policy, where to find fuel, and new mooring field restrictions, Fisher came out last fall with an app for the phone. It’s actually the guidebook in your pocket. Take it ashore with you to find the post office, WiFi, ATMs, immigrations, marine stores, dive operators, markets, and restaurants. If you get lost in town or while hiking, it’ll show you where you are.
I was skeptical at first and a bit overwhelmed at the price, so called Fisher.
“The Doyle Guides App has all of the same general information as the printed guides,” she told me via Zoom. “But the app version can be updated instantly whenever changes come about. This, I do about every two or three days, as information comes in.”
Lexi and Chris go back aways. For years, her dad, Jeff, a Grenadian expat, and Chris ran a charter boat together, out of Saint Georges. Lexi was born and raised in Grenada, schooled in Canada, and is now back, a full-time resident. She’s the perfect relief watch for Chris.
While on Zoom, Lexi showed me how the app was interactive. Charts show locations for all the shoreside attractions and services. Click on one, and up pops detailed information. The app will even place a phone call for you. It’ll show you where there’s fuel, an ATM, and the hospital.
“I don’t see a reason why someone would need to purchase both the printed and the app version,” she added. “Unless they wanted the redundancy.” Or they just like the printed page, I said. The printed guide pages are easier to use while on deck, steering. The app on the small phone screen can be hard to read in strong light. I’d have both.
There are three printed guidebooks now. The updated Sailor’s Guide to the Windward Islands, 2024–2025, is now available for $41.95 at marine stores and online.
The Northern Leewards (Anguilla to Montserrat) and the Southern Leewards guides (Antigua to Dominica) are out of print and being updated. Fresh printed copies of both will be available in November 2024 for $32.95 each. However, older versions of these guides (new and used) may still be available on Amazon (for $21.95), Thriftbooks.com, and other online dealers.
The app, with basic information, is free to download. If you want content for a specific island, then it begins to cost. The Leewards Islands content is $14.99 for a month and $29.99 for a year. To download content for the Windward Islands, it costs $19.99 for a month and $39.99 for a year. Once downloaded, you’ll not need the Internet to use the content. They work offline.
Need a tutorial on how to use the app? Lexi is happy to show you. There is a video webinar on the app pulldown tab on the Doyle website (doyleguides.com/app).
The Ship’s Library
What do we do while off-watch or during the heat of midday in the tropics? We stretch out in the cockpit, under the awning, and read.
The ship’s library is as important to the crew’s well-being as the ship’s pantry. Stocking both requires some serious thought.
It would be a shame to go sailing through the Caribbean Islands without some historical context. Dozens of books have been written, many before Street and Doyle were writing guides, telling of adventures and life in the West Indies and sailing between the islands on small boats.
I was rummaging around the library at Libby Nicholson’s Pineapple House in English Harbor, Antigua, a few years ago when I stumbled onto Richard Dey’s book, Adventures in the Trade Wind. It’s a true story about Morris Nicholson, an English chap who fled the UK after World War II and sailed to the Caribbean. Once there, he worked his way up and down the island chain and eventually became a charter captain on one of the Nicholson schooners out of English Harbour. This is a story about island life before bareboats, GPS, and tourism. I swapped a book I’d just finished and took Dey’s book with me. Curious about the writer, I reached out to Sally Erdle, founder and long-serving editor of this magazine.
“He’s written for the Caribbean Compass,” she replied. “In fact, Richard compiled two very well-researched articles on the literature of the Caribbean. We published them in 1999 and 2000.”
You’ll find Dey’s two bibliographies in the Compass online article archive. Here are the links:
caribbeancompass.com/writingfinish.htm
caribbeancompass.com/dey_part2.htm
With these links, you can begin your search for books to add to your ship’s library, as I have. Right now, I’m reading Carleton Mitchell’s The Winds Call, published in 1971.
David H. Lyman is an award-winning writer and author who contributes regularly to Caribbean Compass and other magazines. Read published stories at DHLyman.com.
