Do You Still Use Cruising Guides ?

[tartansail]

Originally Posted by jackdale

NOAA's Nautical Discrepancy Reporting System

Many thanks. I've input the information. It was an easy process once I knew where to go.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by UnlikelyVoyager

Sorry Jeff, but I'm going to keep pushing back when you disparage your competitors.

It isn't disparaging to list facts about when a book was last published and if additional printing has ended. It's not disparaging to say that there are no eBook versions. In addition, I honestly don't think that any of the traditional travel books are competitors of guidebooks at all. I have had multiple meetings with McGraw-Hill about collaboration. At no time was there ever a competitor issue raised. Travel books like this are different things.

Originally Posted by UnlikelyVoyager

There's a big difference between something being 'worthless' commercially, and worthless for cruising purposes.

We're not talking about a sunset here. We're talking about products that are sold for cash. If the producer doesn't feel they are worth the investment of printing, they aren't printed. If they don't feel it's worth creating a pdf/eBook for, then there's probably little value left in the thing.

Originally Posted by UnlikelyVoyager

In other words, you may be right that its hard to make money selling cruising guides. That doesn't mean they are worthless to those who use them. Far from it, in fact. I think you overrate the value of timeliness.

I have no rating for timeliness. I value correctness. And being correct has to do with your findings meeting your expectations from the information provided. There are times and places where 100 year old information is plenty correct. There are times when knowing the sheered off red day mark bordering the ICW in Florida is looming has an immediacy value that is unmatched. Both the 100 year old data and the "yesterday" data are valuable. Deciding to ignore either type can be dangerous.

Originally Posted by UnlikelyVoyager

"Sponsoring Vendors may offer verifiable, objective facts that point out differences between their product and a competing product only if it serves to clarify an issue, but they may not post in a disparaging, demeaning or derogatory way about a competitor or a competitor's product, service or company."

I believe I did exactly that. We might disagree on what value means but if a book ceases publication, there is certainly someone somewhere who feels there isn't enough commercial value to continue.

I'll concede that on a future Antique's Roadshow, previous books could be worth a lot of money showing how people used to go cruising.

[Svsilvergirl]

Lmao here. My god unlikely voyager , by all means , if your antique cruising guide says coast clear , and some new form of electronic nav aid says there is a big ass rock right ahead of you , feel free to sail on sailor. My opinion is that it will become increasingly unlikely that you will sail much further..........at home I have a great collection of old hardback books that I love dearly , but I can fit about a thousand of em on my iPad ......does your car still have a steam engine ? Prolly some inherent value to steam engines , but I ain't heading down the freeway with one . I for one am extremely grateful that there are people pushing technology and creating a more informed sailing community.

[bobconnie]

I still have paper charts of the west coast from Goose Island to San Diego from 1950s now I would not use these to navigate with BUT theres info there not on current charts paper or plotter, they show things like hailibut grounds,that were closed at that time. Not now! charts just don't show things like that,and shows many more anchoring sites, Ive found some I would never have found on a new paper chart or on my big fancy plotter LOL mite show those to another cruiser but would give up my fishing honey holes LOL like my halibut to much !! Bob and Connie

[Eric.]

I thought I'd add my biased perspective. We publish ebook cruising guides (PDF) to an area of the world where not many people go. If we published them in print we would have never made any money and they would probably be out of print by now. Thanks to users who are interested and support us ($$) we have been able to keep updating our guides for almost 5 years now. With them being electronic we update them 3-4 times a year with no issues and people who buy them can always log in and download the latest version. (No advertising accepted or wanted.)

Our guides for Pacific Central America contain a lot of our own charts, maps and information that has never been published before. (See Taking you to our book!).

The main problem I have with crowd-sourced information like Active Captain is that not many people who are busy traveling are going to sit down and try to update somebody else's website. So remote areas like Central and South America, the South and North Pacific are usually going to stay blank. SSCA has also tried to make a database of PORTS which is available to their members. And I think there is a captainwiki site out there to among others. I've also found in working with other cruisers that not everyone is up to the technical task of accurately describing locations, hazards, etc.

And I've found that in general crowd source documents can be very opinionated, biased and/or inaccurate. That doesn't mean they aren't useful taken with a grain of salt. We have contributed to many and even written a free one about Pacific Colombia (Free Guide Books -- Cruising Guide Books to Central and South America).

If you travel outside of the US/Canada area access to the internet is pretty sparse, so PDF books or epub books and printed books are about the only way to go.

But to address the question asked of the original poster: I don't know anyone who doesn't use cruising guide books of some form.

Eric

[svrevelations]

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. The data doesn't come from us - it comes from everyone out there cruising. Certainly the very far away places will take the longest amount of time to fill out.

For the vast majority of cruising boaters, the very remote areas aren't really very important.

Why can't ActiveCaptain work like SailorsMap.com? - http://map.sailorsmap.com
Although the number of icons displayed on SailorsMap at a time are also limited, one can see icons from a very great distance (height). As one zooms in on your area of choice, icons in that area pops up. To a great degree, this eliminates micro searching the planet.

As a bonus, SailorMaps are filter fed directly from Google Earth which means there are tons of global information relevant to sailors - albeit no reviews, specific information, extensive details, etc.

[Hudson Force]

Originally Posted by Svsilvergirl

.............does your car still have a steam engine ? Prolly some inherent value to steam engines , but I ain't heading down the freeway with one................................

The future of print and electronic cruising guides "prolly aint" going to be determined by the debate of consumers and promoters here, but evolve by what is best fit by the performance of the product. Change is evident.

[lolarose]

like the charts, guides are already 4,5,6 months out of date when they are published.most of the time if i need something to know about area that i am sailing i am using internet for information.web sites like this one.

Welcome aboard

....and of course, cruisers forum.

then i print what i need.

[Eric.]

Originally Posted by lolarose

like the charts, guides are already 4,5,6 months out of date when they are published.

That's not the case with ebook guides. However people who print them out, suddenly realize they've obsoleted themselves when an update comes out two weeks later. Fortunately the e-readers are really starting to get people to think differently about books.

[SailFastTri]

I use both types of guides and there's a place for all, IMHO.

I like the cruising guides. The editing is more well-rounded and feature-rich than the majority of quick entries by boaters, and the ads also contain useful info. I use multiples, as once you go beyond the info about commercial facilities, they usually contain different area info.

I also like various online guide resources, my favorite being ActiveCaptain. They are out of date also, because although they have up to date info the majority are historical posts -- and I'm not sure how current or accurate each little tidbit is, or what has changed since it was posted. As noted in earlier thread comments, it might not be wise to put total reliance in each post but together they can give you a picture. I like the fact that ActiveCaptain is integrated in my PC Charting software (Coastal Explorer) and it adds valuable information.

So I say the more info the better -- just like in navigation (eyeball, AIS, GPS, CP, Paper charts, radar, bearing compass, binoculars) information is helpful. It's up to the user to filter intelligently.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by Eric.

With them being electronic we update them 3-4 times a year with no issues and people who buy them can always log in and download the latest version. (No advertising accepted or wanted.)

Our guides for Pacific Central America contain a lot of our own charts, maps and information that has never been published before. (See Taking you to our book!).

I looked. I think your model is great. Were I going to the areas you cover, I'd buy the eBooks now. Seriously. I'd provide a testimonial for it.

[River Cruiser]

I use Quimby's guide, it's great for the inland rivers.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by MooseMoney

Why can't ActiveCaptain work like SailorsMap.com? - http://map.sailorsmap.com
Although the number of icons displayed on SailorsMap at a time are also limited, one can see icons from a very great distance (height). As one zooms in on your area of choice, icons in that area pops up. To a great degree, this eliminates micro searching the planet.

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.

Of course, all of the third-party ActiveCaptain support provides extensive handling of marker display at higher scale (lower resolution) zoom levels. MaxSea in particular will display all the markers for all of Europe in a single view. The performance issue goes away when it's a single process running on the computer especially using the asynchronous database access that the MaxSea engine implements.

[svrevelations]

Originally Posted by ActiveCaptain

..... Server performance is critical and is the difference between a hobby-project-website and a professional company providing a professional capability.....

Not knocking ActiveCaptain, but;
In this regard the hobby-project-website is certainly kicking the arse of the professional company provided a professional capability.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by MooseMoney

Not knocking ActiveCaptain, but;
In this regard the hobby-project-website is certainly kicking the arse of the professional company provided a professional capability.

I'd welcome the comparison on any level at providing practical, quality information that's important to the boater. 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.

I totally admit that Google's server technology and implementation greatly exceeds anything we could ever hope to implement.

Looking into it a little, you can see the entire Javascript source for the whole mashup by doing a View Source on:
http://www.wosamma.at/sailorsmap/map/

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).