FineEdge.com

Fine Edge Productions was originally started by Don Douglass & Reanne Heminway-Douglass, early pioneers in mountain biking. Their original mountain biking trail guides were small booklets featuring some of the best rides for a given area. These books evolved with success into a full line of well regarded mountain biking books covering the best rides in Northern and Southern California by a full slate of authors well know in their respective areas. During the 1980’s, Don and Reanne, who formerly had extensive sailing experience in different parts of the world, purchased a displacement trawler and began to explore the waters of the Inside Passage from Tacoma up to Glacier Bay Alaska. They looked at the guidebooks available and felt that they could do a much better job using what they had learned creating best selling mountain biking guide books. They also saw opportunity as a number of beautiful cruising areas either had no guidebooks or were sparsely and poorly covered. Out of this the Exploring series was born consisting of a series of six guidebooks covering the waters from San Diego, up the Pacific Coast, through British Columbia, to the cruising areas of Southeast Alaska. In addition, they added books covering the Marquesas in the South Pacific and a series of sea stories and an instructional book on GPS.

In 2002, they decided they wanted to spend more time exploring and writing new books rather than running the publishing side of the business. Mark Bunzel, a marketing and technology executive, previously a Managing Director in the Entertainment and Media Management Consulting practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a marketing executive at Intel Corporation, was looking to re-locate to the Pacific Northwest, and this was an opportunity to leverage his business and publishing experience in a fun and exciting business. Mark had been boating in the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia and other well known cruising area around the world for over 20 years and had previously been involved in the multimedia publishing business as well as authoring books and magazine articles on various subjects.

Today, Fine Edge is one of the leading Nautical and Recreational publishers in the Western US with over 50 books and maps in its catalog. Its products are sold in national chain stores such as West Marine and REI as well as through nautical book stores, general book stores, and mountain biking shops. In 2004, Fine Edge acquired the US rights to co-publish the well know Dreamspeaker cruising guides by Anne & Laurence Yeadon-Jones together with Raincoast Books in Canada. Fine Edge is the lead publisher for the latest Dreamspeaker book Volume 4 – The San Juan Islands. The business is expanding to offer seminars and cruising guides covering the Caribbean with the impending release of Exploring the Virgin Islands by Joe Russell and Mark Bunzel.

Fine Edge’s goal is to continue to acquire, develop and release high quality books and maps for the nautical and recreational industries and develop informational products to market to its customer base.

Don Douglass and Réanne Hemingway-Douglass have sailed from 60° N to 56° S latitude - Alaska to Cape Horn - logging more than 150,000 miles of offshore cruising over the past 25 years. They consider the cruising grounds of Northwest and Alaska some of the finest in the world and an unending source of excitement and pleasure. They spend summers cruising on their diesel trawler, Baidarka.

Don Douglass began exploring Northwest waters in 1949 as a youth. He has sailed the Inside Passage on everything from a 26-foot pleasure craft and commercial fishing boats to a Coast Guard icebreaker. Don holds a BSEE degree from California State University, Pomona, and a Masters in Business Economics from Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of Exploring Vancouver Island's West Coast and, with his wife, Réanne, co-authored the acclaimed Exploring the Inside Passage to Alaska, Exploring the South Coast of British Columbia, Exploring the North Coast of British Columbia and Exploring the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Don holds honorary membership in the International Association of Cape Horners. He has written several skiing and mountainbiking guidebooks and, as a father of the sport, was elected to the Mountain Biking Hall of Fame.

Réanne Hemingway-Douglass holds a BA degree in French from Pomona College. She attended Claremont Graduate University and the University of Grenoble, France. Sailor, writer, cyclist and language teacher, Réanne's articles have appeared in numerous outdoor magazines. Her best-selling book, Cape Horn: One Man's Dream, One Woman's Nightmare, describes pitchpoling in the Great Southern Ocean and has been published in French and Italian.

In the 1980s, Réanne led the first women's bicycling team to cross Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. She is also the principal author of Mountain Biking the Eastern Sierra's Best 100 Trails. Her articles have appeared in numerous outdoor magazines, including Pacific Yachting and Cruising World. Réanne is the chief editor of FineEdge Productions.

The Douglasses have documented nearly 5,000 anchor sites between Seattle and Glacier Bay and their series of detailed cruising guidebooks are acclaimed for setting a new standard.

Mark Bunzel is the General Manager at FineEdge.com with responsibility for all publishing, business affairs and marketing while Don and Reanne focus on writing new titles and interviewing new authors to add to the company's best selling guidebooks and navigation series. Mark recently moved to Anacortes from the San Francisco Bay area where he was a marketing executive for Intel. Prior to Intel, his career included creative and management positions in media publishing and technology. Mark was formerly a Managing Director in the Entertainment and Media Practice for PricewaterhouseCoopers serving the publishing, television and motion picture industry. He is the author of several books magazine articles and white papers and frequently has been a speaker on media and technology issues around the world. Mark is the former Chairman of the Interactive Multimedia Association in Washington, D.C. and a member of the Board of Directors for the Software Publishers Association. While new to living in the Pacific Northwest, Mark has been boating and sailing in the San Juan and Gulf Islands, and the coast of British Columbia for over 15 years. Mark has cruised extensively in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, the Greek islands, and Central America as well as along the West Coast of the US. His boating experience began in Ocean City, New Jersey, where at the age of 15 he started working in marinas learning how to repair boats and engines. In addition to boating, Mark is an instrument rated, twin engine private pilot with over 2000 hours of flight time.

For more information about FineEdge books and products email Mark (mark@fineedge.com) or call him at 360-299-8500.

Captain Herb Nickles grew up on the California coast and has been sailing since the age of eighteen. He has captained or crewed on 20-foot catboats, 30-foot sloops, 40-foot trawlers, and even a 100-foot schooner. Herb holds a U.S. Coast Guard Masters license with sail endorsement and has extensive cruising experience to varied and exotic destinations including Baja California, the Inside Passage to Alaska, Downeast Maine, and the Virgin Islands. Over the past four summers, Herb and his wife, Wendy, logged over 5,000 nautical miles in their Nordic Tug, Snorri. Circumnavigating New England from Lake Champlain to the Bay of Fundy, they collected local knowledge for a forthcoming cruising guide on New England’s best harbors and coves.

Herb earned a BA in Life Science and an MA in Education from the University of California. A college professor and administrator with 36 years of experience in prestigious institutions from coast to coast, Herb is a recognized expert in the field of teaching and learning with technology, authoring eight books on the topic.

Herb's photographs of the Pacific Northwest adorn the pages of many of the Fine Edge cruising guides and appear in magazines including Pacific Yachting and Northwest Yachting. Aboard Baidarka, Don and Réanne Douglass’ research vessel, Herb and Wendy anchored and collected data in hundreds of coves in B.C. and Alaska and are contributors to Exploring Southeast Alaska, Exploring the North Coast of British Columbia, Exploring the South Coast of British Columbia, and Exploring the San Juan and Gulf Islands. Herb's primary role at Fine Edge is the design and maintenance of the FineEdge.com website. He is also an instructor in the Fine Edge seminar, Managing Your Boat Like a Pro.

When not living aboard Snorri in quaint Chatham Harbor, Herb and Wendy can be found at home beachcombing in nearby Harwich Port on Cape Cod.

Captain Kevin Monahan is a Canadian Coast Guard officer with more than 20 years experience navigating the British Columbia coast as a small vessel captain. Born in London England in 1951, Monahan emigrated to Vancouver, and attended the University of British Columbia. His articles have appeared in various magazines including Westcoast Fisherman (now Fisherman Life), Pacific Yachting, Northwest Yachting Magazine, and the Fisherman's News. Monahan worked as a fisherman for 12 years, then on ferries and coastal transports, before joining Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans as a patrol vessel captain.

After the merger of the Canadian Coast Guard with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, he continued as commanding officer of a Coast Guard Cutter. In 1999 he joined the Coast Guard's Office of Boating Safety as head of inspections and investigations for the Pacific Region, where among other responsibilities, he developed training for police and Coast Guard in electronic navigation and enforcement of small vessel safety regulations. From 2001 to the present he served as the Superintendent of the Office of Boating Safety (now part of Transport Canada Marine.) Monahan holds a Master, Intermediate Trade (unlimited tonnage) certificate.

Captain Monahan has provided expert testimony in court a number of times, including expert testimony on the navigational uses of GPS. He is the author of The Radar Book – Effective Navigation and Collision Avoidance and Local Knowledge--A Skipper's Reference, and is the principal author of GPS Instant Navigation and Proven Cruising Routes Volume 1--Seattle to Ketchikan all published by Fine Edge. He is also a contributor to Don and Reanne Douglass's famous cruising guides, Exploring the North Coast of British Columbia and Exploring the South Coast of British Columbia and an instructor in the Fine Edge seminar, Managing Your Boat Like a Pro.

Captain Monahan and his wife Nancy now live in Sidney, British Columbia.