Messing About In Sailboats

Update From Big Oceans

I got the following in response to yesterday's post from Nick. Keep us posted mate Gotham awaits you!

Thanks Adam for the post!

To clear some confusion up: I am going up to New York, because I have friends and family there. Also, I can't stick around the Caribbean during the hurricane season - To add to the fuel, there are work and sponsorship opportunities for me in the States too.

I would like to take the boat overland (don't think I'll change the title of the blog for that though ;) to San Francisco, but it is a costly exercise, and unless a particularly interesting opportunity comes along to make that happen, I am now considering returning via the ICW, and visiting Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica etc before heading for Panama. It's all up in the air right now, but I'm just heading north to St Lucia and then Antigua as of Monday, so we'll see what happens.

This is going to sound funny, but I actually did a lot of research on the NW passage. It may be one of the more ridiculous ideas of toyed with, but it would certainly be record-setting. Anyway, I'll stop there with my NW passage ideas before I start getting labeled as a complete nutter (if I haven't been already!)

Cheers again for everyone looking out for me!

nick

For Mike

10 Knots, originally uploaded by Garry'.

Happy Thursday Mike. Saw this and thought of you

Shout-out for Nauticblog

Thanks to Joe and Horse's Mouth for pointing out a great sailing blog - Nauticblog. For a second I thought it was "Nautiblog" but that sounds like one of Mr Boat Blog's links.  It's in Italian so I haven't a clue what they are talking about but outstanding photos organized by boat type.  Bellissima Guys!

My Favorite Post of the Year From Bruce's Smith's Voyage

Tillerman asked for favorite posts of the year. My favorite post can be found here.

Back in March, there was the tragic news that a boat carrying Haitian migrants caught fire off the coast of DR. Most of the passengers perished. Here is an excerpt:

A boat carrying Haitian migrants caught fire off the coast of the Dominican Republic, leaving at least eight passengers dead and 44 missing, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said Thursday.

The boat was traveling from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos islands when it caught fire about 25 miles north of the Dominican Republic, U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Barry Bena said Thursday.

Two migrants were pulled alive from the water Wednesday and brought to a hospital in Montecristi on the Dominican Republic's north coast. The two adults, a man and a woman, were being treated for burns and dehydration, Dr. Maria Belliard said.

It appeared the migrants had been in the water for at least a day when they were spotted by a U.S. yacht cruising from Panama, said Capt. Jose Antonio Carrero, commander of the Dominican Navy's northern operations.

"They found just the two people, not the boat, not anything," Carrero said.

The rescuers in this story were Bruce and Jan Smith. Their rescue account is incredible. It is one of the most gripping blog posts I have read. They pulled this poor couple out of the water. They were the soul survivors and hard been clinging to the wreckage for 3 days.

The following summed up Bruce and Jan's dilemma.  Their story is very moving.

One night some time ago, in the cockpit of a friend’s boat, the after-dinner conversation was around the question, “If you came across a small fishing boat miles offshore and they needed water, would you give it to them?” Human compassion stood on one side, pitted against personal safety and the threat of piracy. Someone knew a cruising boat that had faced the question head-on. Debating it was food for thought for all of us who venture offshore.

 

Top Sailing Blogs According to Technorati

Tillerman asked for suggestions for the Top Sailing Blogs. As he points out, there a lot of them now. As I waited for the turkey to cook on Thursday, I did a bit of analysis using Technorati. Technorati ranks blogs based on authority as determined by the number of blogs linking to them. It's an odd measure but it suggests popularity. It is far from perfect.

I looked at blogs tagged Sailing and/or Sail. I double-checked against both my and Tillerman's blogroll.  (Some blogs, like mine, had multiple listings, so I took the highest ranking). Here is what I came up with.

Given that Technorati tracks and ranks 112.8 million blogs, getting anywhere on this list is impressive. I caveat the hell out of this and if I missed you, I apologize. Let me know and I will add you to the ranking. Note: You have to register your blog on Technorati to be found.

It is not surprising that 1000 Days at Sea made it to the top given all the press that this venture has received. God bless 'em, they deserve it.

I am delighted and also not surprised that Proper Course gets silver. Great posts, hard work, tenacity and a clear point-of-view count above all. Beating out an organization like Valencia Sailing and BMW Racing is not too shabby. Not bad when laser sailing beats out America's Cup. Congrats Tillerman!

Blogs I would have expected to rank highly like Rule 69 and Livesaildie.com did not make the list as they aren't registered on Technorati (Guys, you need get on there and claim your blog).

Tugster and Frogma rank highly and although they aren't strictly sailing blogs, in my view, they deserve to make the list because a lot of sailors link to them and they do blog about sailing from time to time.

Authority ranking does not equal traffic ranking. For example Zephyr, who is ranked further down the list than I expected, always comes up high on sailing blog searches on Google. Google factors in traffic as well as linking among many other variables in deciding what to serve up. 

It was also very surprising that Scuttleblog ended so far down the ranking.Their main site Scuttlebutt gets a lot of traffic and has a well-deserved loyal following. It maybe that most people link to the main site and not the blog.

So, authority is not perfect but maybe it is indicative of some kind of popularity. The only way we could sort this out definitively is to pool our traffic numbers to a neutral body for analysis. OK, now I am being a real nerd.

Correction - Tripsailor lives

In a recent post I questioned whether Tripsailor was still around. I had the URL wrong. It has survived and can be found at http://tripsailor.com/. It seems to be doing very nicely.

Too Many Networks, Not Enough Users - Online Sailing Communities

Last week, I was invited to join another social network for sailors, called Yachtpals. This is the fifth  in as many months. First there was Sailtrac (a Google maps, mash-up), then Boaters.tv, Boaterscommunity.com, the German-based Tripsail and now yachtpals.

Each seems to have started with the ambition of becoming the Facebook for sailors. Sadly, I think they will all struggle to make it. Sorry guys, I really hope I am wrong and I will buy you all a beer if I am, but things don't look pretty.

It's too early to tell about yachtpals but the interface is a bit clunky. Tripsailor seems to have disappeared. The link doesn't work anymore and it doesn't even come up on Google. As for Sailtrac, although it sounded like a good idea, from what I can tell, no one has joined. I certainly haven't heard from them since it launched. Boaterscommunity seems to be a couple of hundred motor-boaters with some saucy videos of bikini babes fishing (not that I am complaining, just saying that's all).

Boaters.tv could be the only one that's getting any traction. I am guessing based on their published statistics (above) that they have 1,000-1,500 members. Not too shabby guys! It seems to be more oriented towards motor-boaters but they have a critical mass of sailors too, so I am not giving up on them yet. I give them big kudos for the way they are trying to build the community with content (the 3-times weekly Julie videos), events, maps, etc.  If I were a betting man, I would say they are there for the long haul (this is usually the kiss of death and they will probably be gone in a week ).

None of these come close to Sailing Anarchy. I can't tell how many members they have but with close to 40,000 topics in their forums, I am betting it's in the high thousands. Why do they do so well? First, they have been at it a while. Second, it's easy to use. You don't have to create a complicated profile that feels like making up sailing resume. Last but not least, the discussion is good. It can get pretty rugged but it feels like a real community.

Sorry to the other guys, I hope you all succeed but you have a long way to go.

A Shout-out for Marine Blast

If you have not seen Marine Blast, it's worth checking out. It's run by a bunch of Scottish guys who run an anti-fouling shop. They collect some great sailing and boating videos and put their own ..er shall we say earthy spin on them. You have to watch the Porsche designed Fearless speedboat video. One of the Marine Blast guys describes it perfectly as the "Dogs Bollocks". I blew coffee out of my nose.

Good Advice from Cap'n JP for cruisers

5 great tips from Cap'n JP in preparation for the annual Atlantic rally For Cruisers. I will consider sailing gloves in a whole new light.

Google Gadget

If you use iGoogle (the personalized Google home page), I found this great gadget. It's photostream from flickr of some some beautiful sailing photos.