Notebook

At first glance, the recently launched iPhone is ideal for use on a coastal cruise. It isn't just a phone with a built in iPod. It has a GPS built in, its web browser is superior to any other mobile phone browser and well suited for small data entry tasks such as using the skipr.net "Where is my boat" site. On the surface a great phone for marine use!

On my recent sail North on Breakaway, the iPhone hadn't been released, but I did have a "Touch iPod", which has many of the iPhone capabilities. Breakaway had WiFi Internet access through the Ericsson W25, so I used the iPod to great effect to keep up with my emails and also used its mini browser for log entries to the Skipr system. For much of the time I didn't need my computer because the iPod had all the Internet access I needed. When I needed a larger screen or more extensive text entries, my laptop could also conveniently connect to the system.

So how about using an iPhone to do everything?

Until recently, this famous shack in West Bay (Middle Percy) was as close as anyone got to a telephone between Rosslyn Bay and Mackay...

As good as Telstra's NextG service is, with a conventional mobile handset or internet modem, coverage fades away as you move away from the coast or pass uninhabited areas. So...

The observant among visitors to this site will have seen the email subscription option in the right hand column.

Every day the system sends an email which lists newly posted items on a number of relevant Australian cruising sites. It makes for a very convenient way of keeping up with local cruising news.

If you know of other sites which should be included, leave a comment with the site details.

Here are the sites currently "monitored":

• Alfreds Cruising
• Sail-World.com Cruising Australia News
• Skipr's Notebook (this weblog)

as well as the following weblogs of Cruising boats and their owners

• Crystal Blues
• Diomedea
  
• Te Moana

For those "in the know", this is a "mashup" of Feedburner's email subscription service, the Planet aggregator and the sites listed above which all provide"feeds".

It's been a two years since I built the "Where is" skipr.net map service to allow others to follow along, when I was a crew member on Belage, sailing to Hobart. Since then, Google has made it much easier for mere mortals to mark up a map and sharing it with others. Also, the resolution of satellite imaging on Google has much improved over that time.

So here is a short tutorial showing how simple it is to build your own "Where is My Boat" page. The only thing you'll need is a Google login (a Gmail account), which is easy to get and free.

Step 1

Go to maps.google.com.au and click on My Maps

One of the advantages of having an internet connection while cruising is to have the current forecast at hand at all times. But a wise sailor will still expect the unexpected. As I write this, we're anchored on the Shoalhaven river near Greenwell Point, a stopover on an Easter cruise to Ulladulla. I awoke at 0400 hrs to a few creaks and rattles. The kind you get when something is about to change...

Practical Boat Owner (PBO) is one of my favourite magazines. It's reviews are excellent and it often has interesting cruising accounts. It's focus on UK/French destination is less relevant to us in Australia, but even without that, there usually enough in there to justify the cover price. Even better, much of the magazine is online. There is a sample issue online, as of this writing, the January issue is here.

In that issue, there is a good article about AIS. I've been thinking about getting AIS on a new plotter I am purchasing later this year in preparation for next year's cruising adventure. Does anyone have any experience with it around Australia?

Off Watch is an off beat kind of book. As Alan Lucas might have put it in his introduction, it is a book of left-overs. Bits of research that didn't find a home anywhere else, but were too good to throw away. Essentially it is a collection of tidbits that might have found their way into a cruising guide as a footnote or sidebar.

Most of the entries are no longer than a couple of paragraphs and none of them are longer than a page. They are arranged by topic and the 204 page book features a comprehensive index.

It is self published by Alan Lucas and distributed by Boat Books. The price in Australia is $29.95.

Apart from writing here more or less regularly, I have also started capturing information about places where we've been. Click on the map for more details or you can see a list on the right.

Not sure how this will evolve or how useful it will be to others, time will tell.

Comments or contributions are most welcome. Use the comments here or send me an email at "marius at coomans dot com".

I just read an item in Sailworld about a tide calculator, Tidelines for mobile phones. It reminded me about the free tide calculator, wxtide32 (a better name would be good) which I run on my laptop. It's free and works well. You can download it here.

Nancy Knudsen points to the Solitary Islands (off Coffs Harbour) as a place worth seeing in a recent Sail-world article. I had never considered a stop-over there, but it looks an interesting option for those traveling the NSW coast. There are even public moorings in places. You can download further information (pdf's) from this site.