Do You Still Use Cruising Guides ?

[P Valdeolmillos]

Waterwayguy,
some times there's and unfortunate bad timing and that is the case :-( . Our server was updated today with some new features and, while everything works, the registration process seems to have som hiccups. Our tech people are looking at this right now, and it should be fixed in a short while.

You can still enjoy the site without registering in the meanwhile.

Thanks!

[P Valdeolmillos]

Waterwayguy,
problem solved now!

Thanks for your patience and interest. You can go ahead and register now.

- Pedro

Originally Posted by Waterwayguy

pedro, I just tried to register on your site and get
504 Gateway Time-out


Chuck

[gonzo123]

Originally Posted by ActiveCaptain

MooseMoney asked: "Why can't ActiveCaptain work like SailorsMap.com? - www.sailorsmap.com - localized Nautical Information at yourfingertips"
...
The ActiveCaptain website could certainly do that. I think the elimination of 1 line of code would do it. It would also greatly increase the burden put on the server. Unlike sailorsmap.com that probably has 10 accesses a day, we experience 10 accesses a second. Server performance is critical and is the difference between a hobby-project-website and a professional company providing a professional capability.
...
Sailormap is a trivial mashup between Google Maps and the GlocalSearch (Google's search API). The exact same type of information is available in dozens of other ways with many apps, applications, and websites.
...
Looking into it a little, you can see the entire Javascript source for the whole mashup by doing a View Source on:
www.sailorsmap.com - localized Nautical Information at yourfingertips

You'll find that it loads the Google Maps API, Google Gears API, and then has about 2 pages of code to do the GlocalSearch and display. A halfway competent Javascript developer could have written that in an afternoon. It probably took longer to set up the domain, website hosting, and little icons for the POI's (although they're all free public icons).

Hi there,
I have implemented and published SailorsMap, so actually i am the halfway competent Javascript developer of the hobby project-website you mentioned :-)

Thanx for your great analysis, you are completely right: SailorsMap is just a mashup of GoogleMaps, GLocalSearch and GeoLocation.
The only point you're wrong is the "10 accesses a day". SailorsMap is widely used due to its ingenious simplicity. Its just google maps for sailors. I have loads of back-slapping response. Of course, the approach is completely different than yours, but nevertheless successful.

BTW: It took me almost 2 days to implement it just for fun, and it is great to get the response. That's worth it, no regrets.

Lately i integrated SailorsMap into a WebApp, that gives new fun & functionality (POIs are now also available in a listview). So you can check out www.sailorsmap.com - localized Nautical Information at yourfingertips via PC, Tablet, iPhone, Smartphone, works worldwide out of the box...

If there are further Ideas how to extent SailorsMap, just give me a hint, i am keen to extend my halfway competence :-)

best regards,
Wolfgang

...and don't worry: The WebApp integration took me just 3 hours. Not too much for a hobby-project-website.

[gettinthere]

I can't seem to find active captain in the member roster here any longer

[Kettlewell]

Sailorsmap is pretty neat--well worth taking a look at. Not much information there for many areas here in North America, but it is very simple and slick.

[r.fairman]

I think Active Captains slagging off of other similar sites is counter productive. Negative campaigns will always come back to haunt you
I remember Jeffery telling us all to wait until the boat show">Miami Boat Show before we bought a navigation App for the Ipad. He promised a radial new cahrtplotter app All we got was an announcement from Garmin about an app promised for Summer 2012. I use BlooSee that gives more info in my area than ActiveCaptain and unlike ActiveCaptain and has an App for the Ipad.
Active Captain has aready turned down a plugin for OpenCPN. Open source does not fit his business model

[Svsilvergirl]

Gonzo123
Is there an iPhone app that works off line ? I can't find any iPhone app. It do you just use the website in safari ? To be of much use to me , these have to work with no Internet connection. I have a sprint iPhone , and it's about a fifty chance that I have no reception as soon as I walk out the door

[peter loveridge]

Have to admit my conflict of interest, as I am the author of a cruising guide to Nova Scotia. It is difficult for a single author to keep up to date, and its not easy even if if you have a team. I can assure you no-one who writes these things does it for the money! I'm pretty sure Hank Taft and Roger Duncan, who are far more famous than I'll ever be, didn't make much either. I don't accept advertisments, never did,and neither do most of the other guys. I don't tell people who I am when I visit either. In this country, at least, the cost of printing if you have any amount of pictures and charts is prohibitive, which is why my book is CD only. I wouldn't rely on getting a decent internet signal in any of the rural areas of the province. i use a thing that connects to the cell phone system, it usually works but there are gaps and outages aplenty. If you're 25 miles offshore , forget it.
I an quite happy to be called a luddite, but I thought I might be missing out, so I checked "active captain" for my home waters. The two entries regarding McNutt's Island ( in the entrance to Shelburne Harbour) don't tell you that it is untenable in anything of a southerly wind. there is no information about rounding Cape Sable, a potentially dangerous piece of water with very strong tidal streams. These things may have their uses, they don't cost anything, and I don't know what they're like for more populous areas, but there are huge gaps in their information for my home waters, which are actually traversed by quite a number of boats.

[gettinthere]

There's the problem. Incomplete, un-vetted data.

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by peter loveridge

Have to admit my conflict of interest, as I am the author of a cruising guide to Nova Scotia. It is difficult for a single author to keep up to date, and its not easy even if if you have a team. I can assure you no-one who writes these things does it for the money! I'm pretty sure Hank Taft and Roger Duncan, who are far more famous than I'll ever be, didn't make much either. I don't accept advertisments, never did,and neither do most of the other guys. I don't tell people who I am when I visit either. In this country, at least, the cost of printing if you have any amount of pictures and charts is prohibitive, which is why my book is CD only. I wouldn't rely on getting a decent internet signal in any of the rural areas of the province. i use a thing that connects to the cell phone system, it usually works but there are gaps and outages aplenty. If you're 25 miles offshore , forget it.
I an quite happy to be called a luddite, but I thought I might be missing out, so I checked "active captain" for my home waters. The two entries regarding McNutt's Island ( in the entrance to Shelburne Harbour) don't tell you that it is untenable in anything of a southerly wind. there is no information about rounding Cape Sable, a potentially dangerous piece of water with very strong tidal streams. These things may have their uses, they don't cost anything, and I don't know what they're like for more populous areas, but there are huge gaps in their information for my home waters, which are actually traversed by quite a number of boats.

We bought a cruising guide for SFO bay area. It is a relatively easy guide to keep up being a relatively small area. We got it to find anchorages mainly. It was OK...

Paper guides are out of date probably as soon as they come back from the printer and as you state, keeping up with details of a large area is problematic.

In this day and age an online solution would appear the go but the reality is wifi may not be available to go online when you need to.

What would be cool is a global crusing guide Wiki with downloadable pdf - download what you need when you need it. The cruisers last there can update the Wiki entry and share with the global community. This would be cool but I would guess very hard to get traction.

[hellosailor]

I have seen crowd-sourced data that was intentionally sand-bagged, which is not to say printed text is always objective either. But I prefer to open a book, refer back and forth, add postits as needed and yes, even dog pages. That's for planning, and then I'll go look online afterwards to see if there's any change, or newer information. The vast amount of printing information in a guide, i.e. "There are no anchorages/inlets from x to y" isn't going to change. It just seems easier to access all of that on paper.

[Littlechay]

Originally Posted by ActiveCaptain

OK, I guess that's fair. We're not very well filled out in the South Pacific. We also only have a couple of anchorages in the Antarctic. The very remote areas are going to be the last.

Just reading through this thread because I was working when most of it was written. Antarctica is one of my stamping grounds so I thought I would have a look to see what has been marked, couldn't find a single marker in Antarctica. Am I missing something, where are the markers that are already there?

Chris