Messing About In Sailboats

What's your favorite Day sail

The "Great Places to Sail" map now has 332 places on it. To be honest I don't know how, it seems to just gather new places in a random way.

I want to make it a better experience by adding everybody's favorite Day sail.

If you let me your favorite day sail I will add it to he map. You can add it in the comments section or email it to me.

Let me know where it is as precisely as possible, where you sail to, waypoints, features of interest, basically anything that other sailors should know about it.

If you have photos, I can add those too.

I will give a prize of "To the Baltic With Bob" by Griff Rhys-Jones for the best response

"Great Places to Sail" - 157 Places and Counting

Back in February, I started a community-based map for sailors on Platial, called "Great Places To Sail". If you are wondering what the heck this means, Platial uses Google Maps to make it simple for average punters like me to create maps around particular topics (e.g. Bars in Hoboken, etc).

The community bit is that it's designed so that anyone can add a favorite place. When it started, I had about 35 places on the map. There are now 157 "Great Places To Sail" on the map from EVK4's daughter's favorite marker in Berkeley, CA, to the Komodo Islands.

If you have a favorite spot, please feel free to add it. It's pretty easy, although it takes a bit of pecking around to get the hang of.

PS: In one of my nerdiest moments last year I also created a Facebook application for this map so if that's where you prefer to hang out, you can enjoy it there too.

Facebook Application for Sailors

A while back, I created a map on Platial called Great Places to Sail. It's a Google-like map where people can put their favorite places to sail, add pictures, links, comments, etc. A number of bloggers like Edward from EVK 4 and Chris from Bluewater added their favorite places. There are now over 140 places on the map.

Last weekend, in a sad obsessive moment, I turned it into a Facebook application. If you are on Facebook, I would love your feedback. If you like it, please add it to your profile. You can check it out here.

By the way, I am not alone in being a total geek saddo. LiveSailDie, created a Facebook app too.

Toba Inlet, British Columbia

Renova at Toba Inlet, originally uploaded by Naomi T.
I found this on Flckr. This picture was taken in Toba Inlet, British Columbia. The Toba Inlet is a deep fjord, 100 miles north of Vancouver. I loved this shot of Renova anchored by a waterfall. It reminded me of my trip to the Canadian Rockies this summer where the ice melts and creates these spectacular high  mountain falls.

The sailors who posted it have a great gallery. Here are some Orca they saw in the Bay.

Porto Cervo Sardinia

Some  nice pics from my friend Nantini who just came back from Sardinia. I think the big yacht is one of Perini Navi, although it's one of their smaller yachts. She took these form Porto Cervo

 

 

 

 

Whitby by Night

Whitby is a famous Yorkshire fishing town and the home of Thomas Cook. Here is a pic of Whitby by night c/o Peter McGrath, the Beagle guy

For Tillerman - Pics from Colonna

Tillerman, here are a few of my pics from various trips to Colonna. I am not sure if the first one is Turban but if not, it was one of his proteges poncing around on a hobie. And speaking of poncing around,the other is yours truly in a laser.  It was in the weekly race just before the guy passed me. ("Does my bum look big in this?") I got third in the full rig race. This was the race where I didn't fall off the back in a gybe.

A little update about the Map Thing

The nice people at Platial saw my post about some of the usability issues with the "Great Places to Sail" map. They are all over these issues. What a responsive group they are. Here is an email I received today from them:

I saw your blog post about the map. We are working on the "syndicate
my MapKit" feature. It gets quite complicated to think about once you
get into the details. The first step will be to allow a read-only
version for anyone to publish. Next we'll add advanced features so
that you can give permission for other people to publish the map.

We're also talking about changing the hovers on the side bar MapKit
so you get the picture and title on hover, then clicking on the
marker brings up the larger map.

Great Places to Sail -- Now 119 Places

First thank you to Joe "Horse's Mouth" Rouse for the Popeye Award. Not a bad way to start the week.

One of my recent obsessions has been populating the Great Places Sail map. There are now 119 places on it. This Platial tool is quite a handy little widget although it has some usability issues that I am sure they will fix. First, the only way to expand it, is to click on the "Add Places" link, otherwise it stays in the same small sidebar size I set it in my prefs. Second there is no obvious way to share it. My hope was that it could become a community-oriented tool so that anyone who wanted to could add it to their blog and add to it too. Thus it would become not MY widget but OUR widget.

I will keep adding but if you have any suggested additions please either add them or email me.

"Great Places To Sail Map" -- 37 Places so far

Thank you to all of you who have put your favorite places on the map. So far, there are 37 markers.

In the US: Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, California, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Massachussets, Maryland, New York,

Outside the US: UK, Netherlands, Turkey, BVI, Grenadines, Guadeloupe,

Thanks to Edward. Zen and Bluewater who I know left markers. A bunch of other folks did too but I am not sure who they were.

Please feel free to add more. My next task is to figure ouit how to make it shareable.