Sailtales: Email-based Sharing Of Cruising Information

[hafskip]

Sailtales is an email-based system for sharing sailing information, for example about good anchorages, checking in experiences and fuel prices. The basic idea is simple. You subscribe yourself to an area and every report that will be published on that area will be automatically sent to your email address. As you sail along, you change your area to what is ahead of you. In that way you keep receiving only the information that is relevant to you. Of course you can publish your own reports as well and help cruisers that are behind you.

To control the number of reports that you'll receive, I implemented a daily limit on the number of bytes that will be sent to you. This is obviously important for sailmail, winlink and satphone accounts. If so many reports are published in your area that the daily limit is exceeded, these reports will be queued. At the end of the day, only the titles of the queued reports will be sent to you. The full reports can be requested later if desired. Currently I've set the daily limit to 3000 bytes and you can be sure that this will never be exceeded even if you would subscribe yourself to the whole world.

Subscribing yourself is really easy. All it takes is to sent an email to sailtales@janharing.nl, leave the subject blank and put the following line in the email body. Adjust coordinates according to your cruising plans.

subscribe 40N,25N,19E,36E

As an example, this is one of the Sailtales reports that went through the system:

---- 310. Mandraki port Rhodos ----
by JOHANNA on 05-05-2010 at position 36:27.06N 28:13.57E

There are two ways of getting a place in Mandraki port.

The cheap way: find a place yourself. Best chances on the south side between the charter yachts. Full on Friday and Saterday when crews change. Use fenders and some power. If they chase you away say you will leave tomorrow. Pay around 5 euro's per night to the harbour master who will also try to chase you away. Say your engine is broken.

The expensive way: call Alpha Maritime on channel 77. They will find you a place and assist with mooring. They will do all the paperwork, customs and issue the transit log. They charge 50 euro's for there services plus cost of customs (50 euros) and transit log (30 euros) plus harbour fees, for which they will try to get 50 euros per night. Negotiate after getting a place and just pay less. They share part of the profit with the harbour master.

Alternative: anchor around 36:27.8N 028:13.7E, outside the breakwater and avoid the authorities.

Other alternative: don't go to Rhodos, but go tgo Symi. Beautifull, quiet and don't talk to the authorities.
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Below I'll include the Sailtales Help for those who would like to know all the details right now.

Cheers,
Joost Jager
SV Hafskip


TO PUBLISH A REPORT
-------------------
Send your report in an email to sailtales@janharing.nl. Put position
and title of the report in the subject line in exactly the same way as
the following example shows:

24:10.17N 35:40.55E Dolphin Reef

TO START RECEIVING REPORTS FROM A SPECIFIC AREA
-----------------------------------------------
Send an email to sailtales@janharing.nl. Leave the subject empty. Put
the following line in the email body and replace the coordinates with
the coordinates of the area that you would like to receive reports
from:

subscribe 30N,30E,24N,36E

If you are concerned about receiving very long reports in your
mailbox, please note that only the first 1000 characters of any report
are sent to you. If necessary, the full report can be requested later.
Also, there is a daily limit of 3000 bytes after which reports are
withheld. If any reports are withheld, you will receive an email at
the end of the day showing just the titles of the withheld reports.

OTHER COMMANDS
--------------
Send an email to sailtales@janharing.nl. Leave the subject empty. Use
any of the following commands in the email body:

To stop receiving reports:
unsubscribe

To request the full version of a specific report (replace report number):
send 543

To set your boatname (replace with your boat name):
boatname Hafskip

NOTE: Only one command can be accepted per email!

TO RECEIVE THIS HELP
--------------------
Send an empty email with blank subject to sailtales@janharing.nl

QUESTIONS/SUGGESTIONS/PROBLEMS
------------------------------
Please contact me (Joost) at pa1haf@winlink.org