No Foreign Land

Every once in a while, you stumble upon some website or application that makes cruising life easier.  In the past I've written about a few.  On my current Bahamas trip, I was introduced to another that replaces an older standby that (in my humble opinion) isn't as good as it once was, so I thought I would share.

I don't remember when I had first learned of the old standby Active Captain, but when I did, it was a game changer.  It was quickly apparent that crowd-sourced data could be much more timely and up to date than relying on the limited guide books, paper charts, and other traditional sources of sailing information.

Unfortunately, as often happens when a large company finds out about a popular and good idea, they purchase it and try to figure out how to make it an advantage for themselves and not their competition.  And, in this case, I think the new owner effectively reduced the size of the "crowd" and the quality and timeliness of the data.  I don't blame the creator of Active Captain, he did a lot of work and deserved a reward.  So, while I occasionally still looked at Active Captain (when I could get the site to work), it was no longer a go-to place for good boating information.

In steps NoForeignLand.com

I was initially asked if I was on NoForeignLand by another cruising couple in Bimini.  I said I was not, and frankly, I thought to myself that I didn't really want another social platform to deal with.  I almost didn't bother looking into it.  But I was told it included the ability to provide position reports on a map and I thought "hmmm...well, maybe that would be good for our parents and friends to follow along on where we are".  So, I decided to give it a look.

Boy am I glad I did. It is a website with apps available for Android and Apple. Yes, it has a social function and can track where you are (if you want it to). But more useful to me, it has a wealth of crowd-sourced data on marinas, anchorages, places to visit, sources for supplies and provisions, boat yards, navigation hazards, and more.  Since we started using it, we have found a few nice anchorages and places to visit.  We also used it to find provisioning stops and parts.  I'm still learning all of its features, but so far I am quite impressed.

Screen capture of the NoForeignLand
site with our boat highlighted

The app and website were created and are maintained by a couple of active cruisers and seem to have many participants all over the world.  So, if you are looking for a replacement for what Active Captain used to be, I would highly recommend giving it a look.  Like me, I think you will be glad you did.

Meal Planning Update

Hello everyone.  Yes, I'm still alive.  I've actually been working on a post I thought I would have had done months ago, but am finding it a difficult one to write.  Part of the issue is how up in the air any potential plans are right now.  In the meantime, I thought I would write about some things that I used while on the boat and still use on land.

One of these that gets regular usage is meal planning.  Unfortunately the meal planning tool I had been using has decided to make the planning portion of the online tool a pay service.  While I am fine with adding recipes I've created and contribute reviews and ratings as well as endure advertisements, I (like many cruisers) just don't have the money to pay for annual subscriptions for such things.  So, I've been looking for alternatives.

A recipe I created and manually entered into Pepperplate.

Thus far, my favorite is a service called Pepperplate. The meal planning portion of the service is similar to BigOven and the grocery list generation is actually a little better about grouping similar items together so it makes the grocery store trip a bit easier. Recipe access is better as it doesn't link to other sources for the contents or instructions but imports them into the application.  By doing this, it also allows for offline access on tablets and other devices where you have downloaded their app.

The one thing Pepperplate doesn't have is an integrated database of public recipes.  Instead, it utilizes other recipe sites and can automatically import from many sites (AllRecipes, Better Homes and Gardens, Chow, Food Network, Recipes.com, and Simply Recipes just to name a few). It has a browser bookmark applet that makes recipe import simple.  On sites where it doesn't automatically import, pulling in a recipe is a simple matter of a few cut-and pastes using the same browser applet.  This is all similar to how BigOven worked and so far I've found Pepperplate a bit easier to use.

If you are looking for an option to aid in meal planning and provisioning, you might want to give Pepperplate a try.

What's In A Name

Hopefully the last weather-related post for a while.  Tomorrow is the start of the dreaded "H" season (as superstitious sailors, I guess we don't actually utter the "H" word). It is the when and why I needed to be north of Cape Hatteras.

The reason we left Southport rather quickly was a tropical low that was threatening to become a "named storm" for which I would not be covered if I sustained damage while there after June 1. Of course after we left, the storm rose to the level deserving the name"Bonnie," then pretty much fizzled out after it made landfall and caused a little havoc in South Carolina. This wasn't exactly a surprise.

Latest track of "Post Tropical Depression" Bonnie.

While we wanted to play it safe and abide by our insurance, most indications were that the storm wasn't expected to develop into anything too serious where we were in North Carolina.  The weather guessers on the local news generally just regurgitate what the National Weather Service says and their information is only half the picture at best.  To get a better idea, I look at several sources of weather data.

One that I've started using more is the service Windity (https://www.windyty.com/). When this site was first brought to my attention a while ago, I thought it was kind of cute, but didn't really see how useful it could be.  Since that time I've slowly determined that I can get a much better idea of the overall weather picture. Look at the winds, the waves, and weather. With data from their two different models you can get an idea of how things might play out over a several day period.  Naturally, these are models and reality doesn't always follow the script, but I've found that this site can be quite a helpful tool. Recently I downloaded their Android phone application and found it to be equally useful and well set up for mobile use.

The Windity model when the above forecast claims "Bonnie"
will be here. You can see the low (even without a giant L)
and the wind estimate for my current location.

Clicking on the eye-catching graphic shows you the wind, wave, or weather data and an option to bring up a detailed forecast for that point. Running the slider at the bottom moves you around in time (the Android application controls are slightly different, but all the same data is there). For pilots there are even icons for airports that bring up the latest weather data there (regardless of where the time slider appears to be, the airport data seems to be current) I still have no idea how to pronounce the name of the site...but it is helpful.  If you don't use it, you might want to check it out sometime.

So, as a name, Bonnie looks to be a non-event for us.  Windyty, however you pronounce it, is a weather tool worth keeping in your weather prediction arsenal.