This is the kind of thing I wish I’d thought of first! It’s called Active Captain, and no, it’s not a physical-fitness program for boat owners. Instead, it’s a kind of community-edited atlas and gazetteer for recreational boaters.

The atlas comes courtesy of Yahoo! Maps, and the creators have provided the basic structure for the gazetteer in the form of a reasonably comprehensive database of marinas, marine services, and anchorages, including some basic information such as addresses and telephone numbers. The element that will really give this thing some life—detailed descriptions, reviews, anecdotes, recommendations—well, that’s up to the community. If you know something and you feel like sharing, then sign up, log in, and add your information. Just like Wikipedia!

Actually, this has been tried before, notably by the promising, but (so far) rather lackluster Captain Wiki. I’m not sure why Captain Wiki hasn’t taken off. Active Captain has the online mapping “mash-up” thing going for it, and that might help. It might help a great deal, actually, because it makes the content much more discoverable than it would otherwise be. Good luck from Navagear to both efforts! And thanks to Ben Ellison over at Panbo for the tip.