Reeds Marine Distance Tables: book review

Reeds Marine Distance Tables is easy to use and will fascinate the cruising sailor and amateur geographer, says Julia Jones

Reeds Marine Distance Tables Book Jacket
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Reeds Marine Distance Tables (17th edition)

Miranda Delmar Morgan

Reeds, £32.99

This neat book of tables provides distances between over 500 ports worldwide.

It’s primarily intended for owners, captains, navigators of merchant ships but is seen as also useful to cruise ships and superyachts. Its primary quality is portability and ease of use.

Some cruising yachtsmen will value it for those qualities; others will choose to download distances from the internet or more often, use almanacs or the guides to cruising routes which are designed for leisure sailing and for smaller vessels more influenced by prevailing winds, currents and seasons.

That said, I will admit that I found its focussed functionality very appealing and can imagine armchair navigators with a love of numbers spending many happy hours confirming distances from Aarhus to Yokohama by different interim harbours.

Continues below…

60,000 distances are included and 500 ports around the world.

This now includes two principal routes through the Northwest passage though not (yet) the Northeast Passage or Northern Sea Route.

Broadly the world is divided into  eight areas: A = UK, Northern Europe, Baltic & White Seas B= Mediterranean, Black Sea Adriatic C= East Coast of North America & Canada, US Gulf & Central America D=East Coast of South Americam Atlantic Islands, West & East Africa E= the Red Sea, the Gulf, the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal  F= Malaysia, Indonesia, South East Asia, China Sea & Japan  G= Australasia, New Guinea, Pacific Islands  H= West Coast of North & South America.

There’s also a list of the globes major turning points.

If you have ships to route and cargoes to consider, Reeds Marine Distance Tables is clearly essential: for leisure sailors, amateur geographers and seekers after fact, it’s well worth knowing about.

Buy Reeds Marine Distance Tables from Amazon (UK)

Buy Reeds Marine Distance Tables from Amazon (US)

Buy Reeds Marine Distance Tables from Waterstones (UK)

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