Ben Ellison over at Panbo pointed out a nice, free software product for downloading and viewing GRIBs the other day. GRIBs are compact files created by NOAA’s forecasting models to predict wind speeds, directions, barometric pressure and rainfall. GRIB.US maintains a server and provides the software to easily select a specific region of the world and download this invaluable weather forecast information. GRIBs are very compact, so they are great for downloading when you have a slow data connection.

The UGRIB software is straightforward and nicely designed. Clicking on a point on the map brings up a neat graph window with wind strength, direction, barometric pressure, and rainfall predictions for that specific area. An animated view shows multi-day forecasts in quick succession to give a nice feel for how things are developing. The actual GRIB files are downloaded to a folder on your computer where they can be loaded by other navigation and routing software, too.

I’m not sure what GRIB.US’s business model is, i.e. whether they will start charging for aspects of the service at some point, but I’m grateful that they’ve created this great service and software. To try it out the service, you’ll need to register on the website.

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.

I’m not a big fan of mass-produced plastic junk, particularly imported junk. Must every little thing we purchase be made of plastic, on other continents?

But once in a while, I come across a mass-produced plastic product that feels right. Usually, it’s the quality of the design and manufacture that sets such products apart from the oceans of crap that seem to fill our retail shelves. Often, but not always, they are made in Canada or the United States.

Case in point: The E-Z-Foldz step stool. At first glance, it looks like another one of these crappy plastic “gadgets” you might see on the cable TV shopping channel late at night. You could be forgiven for dismissing it without a second thought. (more…)

Over at the Whitehall boats site, there’s the first write-up on one of the new electric outboards from Torqeedo with a Whitehall Spirit 17, a beautiful, classic rowboat. They liked how quiet it was, and it performed pretty well, pushing the test boat at up to 5.3 knots. Charging time was substantial (about 10 hours), and they had a battery/charger failure (which Torqeedo readily agreed to replace). Overall though, they prefer their old Honda 2hp.

My new boat has a nice set of “camper canvas” for the cockpit area, manufactured by King Marine Canvas in Seattle. Although it’s been used, it’s still in great shape. But jeepers, it’s difficult to snap into place. In fact, there is one snap I simply cannot make fast without partially dismantling the frame, just to take tension off the canvas. This is pretty much how it’s supposed to be, though, because taught canvas behaves better underway as well as in wind and rain.
  
Luckily, the previous owner elected to include a tool he’d found indispensible with this canvas. I’ve got to admit, it’s darned handy. It’s the Top Snapper, manufactured by Ironwood Pacific out of Lake Oswego, Oregon. If you’ve got drumhead-tight boat canvas, and your bruised thumbs are giving you grief, you might want to take a look at this. Mine is the older model with the wooden handle, so it lacks the additional fitting you see on the red butt-end of the tool in these pictures, which is intended for use on outside snaps. That could be handy, and I may need to get an updated version of the tool one of these days. (Did I really just write “red butt”?)

A couple years ago I first saw the beautiful and incredibly robust Lopolight LED navigation lights at Strictly Sail in Miami. Happily, I see they are now available from Ahoy Captain, a great online catalog site for high quality voyaging products. They carry what looks to be the full line, with everything from masthead tricolors, to sidelights, anchor lights, etc. They are not cheap, but by all appearances, they should stand up to most anything nature can dish out.

The other day, my seven-year-old daughter asked why the anchors she saw on boats didn’t look like “normal anchors”. Whuh-huh? It took me a minute to realize that the anchor she had in mind was the traditional Fisherman’s or Admirality-pattern anchor, familiar to her from illustrated books and movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean. You just don’t see these “normal anchors” on “normal boats” these days!

But while she was confused by the various fluke, plow, and claw-style anchors hanging off bow rollers at the local marina, I’ve got to admit to a bit of anchor confusion of my own. What’s up with all these newfangled, funny-lookin’ anchors I see?!?

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Our neighbors over at Shine Micro have come up with a nifty mash-up of AIS and Google Maps, worth taking a few minutes to play around with. You have to sign up to use the service, but it’s free, and the sign-up isn’t particularly cumbersome or intrusive.

Especially note the “Search” tab on the left, which you can use to find a vessel if you know it’s MMSI or name. Foss Maritime, for instance, names all their vessels something like [given name] Foss, so you can search for “Foss” and find all their vessels. At least, you can find all their vessels that are operating in a coverage area. So if you’re waiting for your ship to come in, and it’s the Omega Lady Sarah, she’s in the East Basin in LA.

I’ve checked out every Puget Sound/San Juan Islands cruising book I could find at the Seattle Public Library. Here is my summary:

A Cruising Guide to Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands, second edition, by Migael Scherer, published by McGraw Hill/International Marine, 2005; $39.95. I like this one a lot. Sturdy, well organized, folds flat on any page, lots of good information, very professional presentation. But what really makes this book shine is that the author’s voice comes through. Not only is the book a thorough and authoritative reference, but it has a bit of personality, as well. It’s not cutesy or in-your-face or distracting; I just mean that you can sense the individual human personality behind the words on the page, and this gives the book a genuineness that makes it very pleasant to read. Perhaps another way of saying this would be: If I were to write a cruising guide, my goal would be to produce something like this. After conducting this review, this is the book I went out and bought.
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Well, that’s what I think, anyway. I have owned a pair of DuBarry “Shamrock” boots since 1997, and this afternoon I had occassion to use them again. Man, this is shweeeet footware, I tell ya! I’ve used them offshore, I’ve used them for year-round racing in Puget Sound, and today I wore them while unblocking a clogged gutter downspout! (more…)