A Little Background

To us, cruising is supposed to be one part fun, one part character building, one part enlightenment, one part food, one part adventure, one part reading ù with a little bit of stress thrown in just to keep us on our toes. So, at the end of the day, we often want to just tie up, kick back and relax in a slip or on a mooring. That usually means finding a marina. A marina stay can be expensive -- sometimes as much as a nice hotel room -- and a lot harder to leave then that hotel room when itÆs not what you expected.

After years of trying to guesstimate what weÆd find based on the cruising guidesÆ summary grids or their marina ads or by quizzing dockmasters over the phone, we discovered a handy little loose-leaf Marina Guide, covering about 250 marinas, that was published by the Atlantic Cruising Club. The information was invaluable ù it was objective, specific and even included rates along with the ACC Reviews and Ratings. The Guide provided details that weren't available anywhere else and all marinas included had been personally visited by ACC. To make a longer story short, we acquired the Atlantic Cruising Club in 1996, took it digital, added over a hundred reports and, a year and a half later, published the first publicly available Atlantic Cruising ClubÆs Guide to East Coat Marinas ù Book and CD-ROM. Since then, weÆve visited more than 1500 marinas (most several times), revised the original Marina Reports and added over 1,000 new ones. WeÆve also built a library of about 20,000 photographs and compiled over 300 items of information on every significant transient facility along the East and Gulf coasts.