Favorite Electronic Publications?

[MilShooter]

As I sit alone in my darkened home this morning, drinking my first cup of coffee, I looked-over the apps on my New iPad and then to the “bookmarks” in my browser. I noticed that I’ve collected several references that provide me with information and entertainment each day.

I wondered if someone had put-together a list of their favorite apps or web sites for the forum? I’ll start it off with my (recently) most read online magazine, “Boat US”. If you haven’t yet discovered it, they offer digital copies (for free!) of their magazine at their web site. Once you click on the link, a graphical page opens that shows the latest edition. In order to read previous editions, look at the left-hand set of tabs. You should see one that is labeled “back issues”. Click on it to see all of the digitized issues available for your reading pleasure. Right now, it goes back to January/February 2010. I’ve only read the two most current issues, but I just know that I’ll find some nugget of wisdom in each issue, even if it comes from an advertisement.

So check it out and save it to your favorites or bookmarks. The Boat US digital edition reads just like a printed magazine but is enhanced in one important way: it has hot-links to the advertisers’ web sites. That’s right, you can just click on the hot part (the web link will be highlighted when you roll-over” it) of the advertisement and you’ll be magically transported to the manufacturer’s web site. Ain’t technology great?

If you desire, you can also download each edition in a pdf file for later reading or reference. I tried it and found that reading it with Adobe's PDF reader worked very well - even the hot-links came through.

I’m interested in other such digital magazines and newsletters, so if you know of some, please tell us about it and give us some help in finding it.

Enjoy.

Gary

PS - Has anyone seen my socks?

 

[Blue Heron]

Hey Mil
I like to read Active Captain and Marina Life.
Enjoy the Coffee.

 

[Marin]

Classic Yacht Magazine is a beautiful digital magazine. It's free but you do have to sign up for it Classic Yacht Magazine May-June 2012

This is the only marine magazine we "subscribe" to. Basically when you sign up they send you an e-mail telling you the new edition is avaialble on-line. I don't know that they will actually push the new edition to your computer/iPad.

The only marine apps we have and use on our iPad are:

Navimatics which is a charting app (but NOT a navigation app) that we have started using when we're out to provide the "big picture' of the area by letting us zoom in super tight or zoom out super wide with a few finger swipes. This is way faster than pawing through chartbooks (which we still have open at the helm) or trying to zoom around on the GPS plotters. It's $25 or so to get the app for your location (we have the west coast US-Canada version of the app which includes Alaska, too). Great for planning a trip or simply looking around at different places while you're underway. I told Eric Henning about it before he started his run bringing his Willard from their former home in Alaksa down here and he has commented that it proved useful in looking ahead as they went to figure out where they wanted to anchor for the night and so forth.

It interfaces with Active Captain so all the Active Captain info is overlayed on the charts as little colored boxes. Tap the box and the Active Captain data for that location comes up including people's reviews of the marina, anchorage, etc.

Navimatics will show you your track--- the term they use for a line extending out from your vessel symbol showing where you will go on the chart if you continue on your current course----and it will drop a track line behind your boat as you go. The positioning and tracking functions work without a wifi or 3/4G connection BUT you have to have a GPS signal. So far as I know the only iPads with built-in GPS are the ones with both wifi and 3/4G. The wifi-ony models won't locate your boat on the charts unless you can feed an external GPS signal to the iPad. The charts are all there, however, and you can zoom and pan around them and look at details without a GPS signal.

We also have an app called Marine Traffic. This is an app that takes the AIS data from all vessels who are transmitting an AIS signal and diplays it on a chart. It is worldwide--- if you want to see what vessels are going up and down the Thames River in London it will show you that. You pick the part of the world you're interested in and zoom into it.

The ship positions and data are real-time and you DO have to have an active wifi or 3/4G connection to use it. There are a number of similar apps in the app store--- Marine Traffic had the best reviews from professional captains. You can select a vessel on the map, tap it, and all its data comes up including photos of the vessel if someone loaded them. We have not found any value in having an actual AIS transciever on our boat where we cruise, but this iPad app is something of a substitute for the receiving part assuming you have an internet connection.

The third iPad app we have and use is TideTrac. There are a ton of tide and current apps in the store--- this one seemed to be the best in our opinions.

 

[ben2go]

This is a rated PG site so I can't post my favorite websites.


My favorite websites in no certain order.
This site
Spira International and his facebook page
wooden boat mag and forum
Iboats
cruisers net
sailnet
boating how to
boat design net
defender industries
west marine
duckworks

There are others but they're not my favs.Still good sites.

 

[FF]

Pro Boat Builder , the best pub for any interest in boating.

 

[Moonfish]

Though it's not necessarily a digital "magazine", the 2012 Waggoner Cruising Guide is now available as an iPad app. It's our favorite Pacific NW cruising guide, in that we refer to first and most often (the Dreamspeaker Series is the most beautiful, but has less overall content).

2012 Waggoner Cruising Guide for iPad on the iTunes App Store

 

[Marin]

I didn't realize the Waggoner was still being published now that Bob Hale is no longer associated with it. Good to know it is and thanks for the tip on the iPad version.

We have found the most actually useful cruising guides to this area to be the Douglas guides. They give more actual boating and anchoring information than any of the others. We use them plus the BC Sailing Directions and US Coast Pilot for most of our guidebook needs.

However the Waggoner has always been the best source for what is available at various places. And now that we have Navimatics on the iPad with the Active Captain overlays, that is a great source of information, too.

We've looked at the Dreamspeaker series but were not particularly impressed with them. They're better than some but with the Douglas guides and Waggoner available the Dreamspeaker guides are to us a very distant third in terms of usefulness.