Google Earth Presentation of BlueJacket's Sailing Routes

[geoffschultz]

I've spent a lot of time creating a Google Earth presentation of my cruising aboard the BlueJacket. For those of you who don't know what Google Earth is, it's a program that allows you to view satellite images of the earth and you can "fly" anywhere that you want with a flick of your mouse. You can zoom down to amazing levels of detail. In many places you can make out details of cars on a street. In some areas (such as Boston) 3D representations of buildings have been constructed such that you can fly *between* the buildings. It's absolutely amazing!

The Google Earth program is free as well as access to the satellite image database. However, it does take a fair amount of CPU power and a high speed Internet connection. To download a copy of the program, go to:

earth.google.com

One of the things that you can do with Google Earth is to create "placemarks" and "paths". A placemark is a location that you want to reference and paths show a route. I've created placemarks and paths for virtually all of my cruising. This includes locations from Maine to Florida and virtually all of the Caribbean. The placemarks include text snippets from my logs and then link to the entire log as well as photos from the area. The logs from most of the US east coast and eastern Caribbean are pretty thin, but the photos are good. Everything gets much better starting in Venezuela and west of that.

Anchorage placemarks utilize anchor icons, placemarks which include diving information have dive flag icons, and land based travel utilize either sign posts, Myan pyramids or airplanes. Icons are grouped by region / country / state or year.

Once you have Google Earth up and running you can access the file containing my placemarks and paths at:

[URL=http://www.GeoffSchultz.org/GoogleEarth/BlueJacket.kmz]BlueJacket.kmz[/URL

-- Geoff

[geoffschultz]

I just finished updating my Google Earth file to include our 2008 cruising. In 2008 we did what's known as the "Down East Circle Route." This trip started in the Chesapeake and wound through the Hudson River, the Erie and Oswego canals, Lake Ontario, down the St. Lawrence river, through Canadian Maritimes and Prince Edward Island, into the Bras d'Or Lakes of Nova Scotia, down the coast of Nova Scotia and finally back along Maine, NH, MA and into RI.

This file also covers almost 40,000 miles of cruising and includes virtually all of the Caribbean, Bahamas and lots of the eastern US and Canadian coastlines.

I also implemented "regions" which means that placemarks aren't displayed until you zoom into the area which contains them. Prior to this there were too many placemarks and it was confusing. Now all that you see is a colored path showing the route that we took on a given year. As you zoom in on that path, you'll see the placemarks.

If you click on a placemark, you'll see a snippet of the log and a link to the full log as well as links to photo albums and videos.

To access the file directly via the Google Earth program, click on the following link:

http://www.GeoffSchultz.org/GoogleEarth/BlueJacket.kmz

Alternately, you can use the Google Earth plugin and your browser (note that I suggest using the program directly.) You can do this by clicking on

BlueJacket - Google Earth

and following the directions on the page.

-- Geoff