Active Cap't and Trusting your Sources

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Interesting article. Wonder if Garmin will check it out or not.
 
Reading something like this just makes me want to throw up. Even in the few college essays that I may have come close to plagiarizing something or somebody, I hope I produced a more creative copy than that.
 
"Kayley" was one of the many areas of contention here with Jeffrey as even when pointed out, he'd do nothing, which made everyone believe he was Kayley. Either way, plagiarized.

As to the more important point of the article, as Mulder said, "Trust No One." Best to have multiple sources and not one copied from the other. However, even then you don't know when or by whom it was marked and you have to couple the information with what you see.

We always pay attention to any hazards shown on any charts or books we use. However, we don't assume they're right where placed and we don't assume because none are shown, that means none exist. Many times we've contacted a tow captain to get local information and been told about the shoal or hazard that wasn't as shown or wasn't shown, things too like the Port 30' of the channel has filled in from recent rains and is now less than 4' deep.
 
The authors of the article are spot on with their distinction between primary and derived source. But it's deeper than that. The serious student can start by Googling "Marine Charts Zone of Confidence".
 
As BandB alluded, the discussion on TF with Jeffrey regarding Kayley was very enlightening. It was a few years ago if I recall.

Portage, I wasn’t familiar with the concept of ZOC until I took your suggestion to Google it. Thanks.

One of the things that I appreciate with paper charts (Luddite that I am) is being able to see what survey the charts were based on. It is surprising how old some of those surveys are.

I readily admit to falling into the trap of confusing precision with accuracy at times. The precision of our chart plotters and GPS can fool us into thinking that the charts are as accurate as they are precise.

Another advantage of paper chart navigation for is that I don’t fool myself into thinking that I know precisely where I am with respect that rock on the chart.
 
dhays said:
One of the things that I appreciate with paper charts (Luddite that I am) is being able to see what survey the charts were based on. It is surprising how old some of those surveys are.

Another advantage of paper chart navigation for is that I don’t fool myself into thinking that I know precisely where I am with respect that rock on the chart.
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And "paper" doesn't have to be actual, physical paper.

NOAA (for example) raster charts displayed on a plotter or in an app offer many of (most of? all of?) the advantages of physical paper, without some of the disadvantages.

-Chris
 
dhays said:
As BandB alluded, the discussion on TF with Jeffrey regarding Kayley was very enlightening. It was a few years ago if I recall.

Portage, I wasn’t familiar with the concept of ZOC until I took your suggestion to Google it. Thanks.

One of the things that I appreciate with paper charts (Luddite that I am) is being able to see what survey the charts were based on. It is surprising how old some of those surveys are.

I readily admit to falling into the trap of confusing precision with accuracy at times. The precision of our chart plotters and GPS can fool us into thinking that the charts are as accurate as they are precise.

Another advantage of paper chart navigation for is that I don’t fool myself into thinking that I know precisely where I am with respect that rock on the chart.
Click to expand...


Exactly! I wish the raster charts on a plotter made it easier to find notes, survey dates etc.

In general, the older the survey and less traveled by heavy traffic an area is the less faith I put in the GPS + chart plotter being accurate.

I can't find it this morning but somewhere I have a screen dump from Rose Point's Coastal Explorer displaying a raster chart, a pic of the radar and pic out the wheel house windows as I ran a narrow pass between a small island and the main peninsula. Radar and eyeballs showed me right down the middle. Plotter showed me on land.
 
Whether it's guide book info, charts, or your location, it's always wise to "triangulate" when navigating. The term of course comes from navigation, sighting the bearing to three different objects, and plotting those on a chart. The three lines should intersect at your location, more or less. The more precisely the lines intersect, the more accurate you location. And if the lines don't more or less intersect, then something is wrong.


The same idea can (and should) be applied to chart accuracy, guide book info, etc. Try to triangulate on an answer, and if the pieces of info don't agree, stop and figure out why. And definitely don't just rely one a single piece of info, especially for something critical.


The previous example of using radar, visual, and a GPS location on a chart to triangulate position is a great illustration. Three different sources are used, and in theory all three should agree. But one source was an outlier, so judgement needed to be applied. In this case your eyes are the most reliable, followed closely by the radar. And charts are know to be miss-located, so the chart was the data point that got rejected in favor of the other two that agreed with each other. A fourth data point was probably implicitly at play as well, namely water depth, which I expect corroborated the visual and radar locations, and further discredited the chart's geo-location.
 
Good article. I always take what I read on active captain with a grain of salt and I'll confess I try to decipher if the info is from the sailing crowd or the powerboat crowd. I tend to trust one more than the other. ;)
 
slipkid said:
Good article. I always take what I read on active captain with a grain of salt and I'll confess I try to decipher if the info is from the sailing crowd or the powerboat crowd. I tend to trust one more than the other. ;)
Click to expand...

Wifey B: That's like reviews there. I look at the detail, not the averages. Sometimes the negatives are things I don't care about. Other times the positives are. Then those who grade because of price. Well, price is just fact, not something to grade on. If you stopped you already knew the price. :)
 
Active Captain seems to be mostly an east coast thing. Never heard anyone refer to it where we cruise in PNW. After reading the article by Slowboat and its recent acquisition by commercial interests, probably best to avoid the habit (same with Yelp and other user review sources).
 
nwboater said:
Active Captain seems to be mostly an east coast thing. Never heard anyone refer to it where we cruise in PNW. After reading the article by Slowboat and its recent acquisition by commercial interests, probably best to avoid the habit (same with Yelp and other user review sources).
Click to expand...

We found it useful in the PNW and Alaska. We've found it helpful all down the coast and around through the Panama Canal, in both the Eastern and Western Caribbean, Gulf Coast, East Coast, US and Canada. I believe anchorages have more information and reviews along the East Coast, but we found excellent information on Marinas, bridges, and locks.
 
There are several issues raised in this article. They note the “error” in the NOAA charts but don’t comment on the reason for that error. Further they incorrectly state that this error is “propagated” to Navionics and Garmin charts. The correct term is “replicated”. Propagation error refers to an incorrect fix(s) being propagated to the rest of the bearings used to create the chart. So...the entire inlet is incorrectly shown on the chart. This error may occur on locations that were surveyed before GPS became available and subsequently drawn on charts.

The whole “Active Captain” issue is...well...another issue entirely.

Jim
 
JDCAVE said:
There are several issues raised in this article. They note the “error” in the NOAA charts but don’t comment on the reason for that error. Further they incorrectly state that this error is “propagated” to Navionics and Garmin charts. The correct term is “replicated”. Propagation error refers to an incorrect fix(s) being propagated to the rest of the bearings used to create the chart. So...the entire inlet is incorrectly shown on the chart. This error may occur on locations that were surveyed before GPS became available and subsequently drawn on charts.

The whole “Active Captain” issue is...well...another issue entirely.

Jim
Click to expand...

Hi Jim,

I think the use of "propogated" versus "replicated" is a nit in this situation, but I'll bite anyway. The error was not replicated. The error in the derived vector charts is different from, but caused by the origInal raster chart error. It is not a replica.

Since people like Garmin and Navionics are creating vector charts using raster charts as a source, they don't "replicate" anything. They are creating a derived version of the original.

Propogation doesn't denote what type of error is being moved from source to destination (unless there is some specific cartography usage of which I'm unaware - let me know if there is). It simply connotes the movement of something from a source to a destination. My intent using that word was to indicate that the NOAA chart error caused the errors in the others, but was not the same.

Webster's:

propagated; propagating
transitive verb
1 : to cause to continue or increase by sexual or asexual reproduction
2 : to pass along to offspring
3 a : to cause to spread out and affect a greater number or greater area : extend
b : to foster growing knowledge of, familiarity with, or acceptance of (something, such as an idea or belief) : publicize
c : to transmit (something, such as sound or light) through a medium

Also, you say that we didn't state the reason for the error in the original chart. We don't know that reason. When a NOAA chart has wrong information, we aren't aware of any mechanism to find out why the mistake was made. It simply happened - the chart doesn't reflect reality.
 
BandB said:
We found it useful in the PNW and Alaska. We've found it helpful all down the coast and around through the Panama Canal, in both the Eastern and Western Caribbean, Gulf Coast, East Coast, US and Canada. I believe anchorages have more information and reviews along the East Coast, but we found excellent information on Marinas, bridges, and locks.
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BandB, I am not picking an argument. More like i’m Wondering if I know how to use active captain. I feel like nwboater. I get more info off my raymarine/gold navionics charts than ActiveCaptain. I’ve tried using the website and SeaIQ.
 
Ok, just figured out what I was doing wrong with SeaIQ. Now I see the reviews. still can’t figure out how to use their web site.
 
I'm not a PNW guy, but I do know that Active Captain was initially populated with a lot of data which seemed like it came right out of the Coast Pilot and other print sources.

So both points may be true; there IS useful data for the PNW in AC. But for all I know there may not be as many user-generated entries like anchorages.

The good navigator uses ALL the information at their disposal, never over-relying on one source or disregarding another just because it's new or unfamiliar.
 
Think there is a far more simple takeaway regarding AC (Active Captain). Crowd source data by definition isn't about one review and in most cases less accurate by using averages. I use AC a fair amount. Depending on how critical the information is, should determine how many sources you need and whether they have a proven track record with you. From the risks listed in the article, it's unlikely I would trust 1 person on AC. If the risk was sticking the bow in some mud, that might be different. For the inlet in the article, I would need to see several reviews or at least a couple from reviewers I trust.

Regarding averaging, without reading the individual reviews, you can't qualify how relevant the reviews are to you. If a reviewer has a 10' draft and a 70' mast, you may get a decidedly different review of an anchorage than the cruiser in a shallow draft 28' trailerable.

Ted
 
tiltrider1 said:
Ok, just figured out what I was doing wrong with SeaIQ. Now I see the reviews. still can’t figure out how to use their web site.
Click to expand...

It's good for certain things and not others. We use it more like a trip advisor than any sort of navigation tool. We use the web version only and do not integrate it with any plotter.

It is the most complete list of marinas I am aware of, so in planning trips we use it to search for marinas at both planned and possible stops. If then a marina interests us or we want more information, we go from AC to the marina's website through the link on AC. So, it's part of our trip planning. Also, if plans change, it's a quick resource for finding marinas in new locations. We do look at the reviews of marinas for any additional information they might provide. We've found them very helpful on things like "road traffic bad in north marina. Ask for south". Or for warnings like "docks under repair." For those of you concerned with marina restrooms, showers, and laundry facilities or with transportation or propane or groceries, the reviews often have information on that, just be careful to look at dates. It's a good source though if you see three recent reviews and they all complain about the filthy showers and restrooms.

We do not anchor as much as the rest of you. However, we've found it to be a useful resource for anchorages when in need. We've found it a very good resource into information on inlets and the advisability of using them and how to best use them. We've also found it useful in highlighting shoals and hazards, but as they do change a lot, wouldn't depend on it or any single source. Again, however, we don't use it as a plotter. We also, when on the east coast use Waterway Guide and Cruisers Net. In the PNW we'd use resources like Waggoner. For the loop, we found some very good Great Lake's guides online. We use other resources in different places. AC also has excellent information on bridges and locks including heights, openings, how to contact, and hours.

It was always ironic in that while I couldn't stand Jeffrey, I use and recommended Active Captain. My internal jury is still out on Garmin but I still like Active Captain. However, for us, it's a planning and "advisory tool". I say advisory because while I look at it's warnings, I don't accept them as gospel or the only hazards. We don't use it for routing, although we might just in looking ahead at locations.

Other planning tools we use are primarily online guides that have information on the towns behind the ports or marinas. For instance, the Great Lakes guides we found were excellent in helping us decide where to stop. Beyond that we go to land dweller's tools. For restaurants, we generally use Google Maps as our start. So easy to get a fairly complete view of restaurants near the marina or in the town and to get to reviews. For sightseeing, we generally start with Trip Advisor as the most complete list of sights and tourist activities. Trip Advisor also has restaurants and the comments are useful, but we've not found the ratings to be as useful as Google, primarily because they seem very price sensitive and because they don't show you the proximity of the restaurant to the marina.

Even when we had a boat with Garmin, we did not integrate Active Captain with it. For us, they're very different tools. I have no problem having a separate resource not integrated. I prefer it that way.

We have a great deal of pleasure in trip planning. Our friends and family jump in with us too. If we're planning a trip up along a coast, we love looking at all the towns along the way, seeing what is in each, then deciding which ones for this trip. That's entirely separate then from routing of that trip we will do.

As to using the website, we simply go to Maps and then on the new site, for a starting place we'll enter a city in the search. Then we will "Hide Marker Information" and remove the search term from the search box and just go from the map. We remove the search term so we're not limited in what we see. For instance, search on "Key West" and you just get those items in Key West, in a small area. Remove the search term though, and many more markers become visible. We hide the marker information, just to have a larger map. We also "Hide Filters" for the same reason. That gives us a full screen of map with all markers shown and we can go from there. For instance, from the same "Key West" search, I can now move up either coast. We will switch between "road" and "satellite" and "NOAA" view depending on what we need to see. Road gives a good quick overview and shows cities and towns and is easy to tell the area you're looking at. Satellite gives you the aerial view and appearance. Then NOAA will quickly show you the depths, channels, and traffic lanes.

We cruise in many different places and many of those for the first time. Every resource we can find to give us information on new areas, we find useful. We then learn, here's a town we want to visit, here's how to get there, here's the marina we want, here are the sights we want to see , and we even go to local events calendars to find out what is going on when we're planning on being there.
 
I use AC for anchorages all the time and rarely disappointed, however I like to see more that one comment and back up plan. Over time, I recognize posters that have pretty reliable info.

When entering an anchorage, I use Navionics sonar charts for depth and found it extremely accurate. I'd use my Simrad forward facing sonar more often if the damn thing worked.

The worse cases of anchorages has been spots where it's difficult or impossible to set the anchor... and that's been only a few times.

Overall, it's been a GREAT source for the Loop trip. Used it 3x in the past week.
 
Walking through just one example of how we might use various resources. Starting by entering Port Townsend, WA in AC.

It shows us Port Townsend Boat Haven and Point Hudson Marinas and also the PT Shipwrights Co-op and PT Yacht Club. Both have links to the town's website. Looking at reviews of Port Townsend Boat Haven, I found mostly good but not necessarily current. For instance laundry equipment out for repair but that was May, 2017. Still worth checking when calling them. Grocery store across the street. I saw West Marine right across the street but that was 2015 so I'd double check. Looking at Port Hudson, I found it's right in the old part of town. I even got a link to the ptguide.com for local events such as the Wooden Boat Festival. Showers roomy and spotless. Good floats, permanent fender strips. Lousy wi-fi.

I remove Port Townsend from my search box and also see several marine services. I see anchorages too and as my mind wanders, I see Fort Flagler State Park Moorings so decide to look at it. Last reviews were 2013 and seemed a problem with buoys breaking loose which I'd definitely want to check and see if that continues.

What else is near. I see Port Hadlock going south. Ok, I've decided on Port Townsend, but is it Port Townsend Yacht Haven or Port Hudson. I have to go to their websites and perhaps call to decide as depths and size slips aren't shown on AC for those locations. Looking at Satellite view they did both appear to have nice long transient docks so size not likely an issue.

I then went to Trip Advisor and found so much to see there. The Marine Science Center and Maritime Center instantly got our attention. Also the Light Museum and Museum of Science and History and some of the parks. Aero Museum might appeal to many. We found the visitors center too. Definitely a place we could see spending a few days.

We actually spent 3 1/2 days in May 2014, seeing many sights, spending one day in our RIB exploring near by. I recall Lanza's was a very good restaurant. Going to Google if I was looking to be within walking distance of the marina, I'd look at Sea J's Cafe, Propolis Brewing, the Marina Cafe and Blue Moose Cafe which all have excellent reviews.

I just went to ptguide.com. This weekend the Olympic Music Festival and the Chimacum Inter-Dependence Day was yesterday. Farmer's Market today for those interested. I looked ahead to August and saw the Olympic Music Festival continues and Acoustic Blues Festival plus a county fair, a street fair. Doesn't look like anytime during the summer there isn't something going on there.

That's how we would approach Port Townsend and some of the tools we'd use.
 
It would appear this article has upset Jeff and his followers on Facebook. They are trying to tear down Slowboat. I know the folks from Slowboat and find they are very repeatable and honest folks.
 
Alaskan Sea-Duction said:
It would appear this article has upset Jeff and his followers on Facebook. They are trying to tear down Slowboat. I know the folks from Slowboat and find they are very repeatable and honest folks.
Click to expand...



Jeffrey doesn’t handle any criticism well and the issue of the plagiarized material was brought to his attention years ago and he chose to not address it at the time.

I also use AC as a resource and have contributed to it. I think the idea is great as long as you recognize crowd sourced information for what it is.
 
Jeffrey responded

dhays said:
Jeffrey doesn’t handle any criticism well and the issue of the plagiarized material was brought to his attention years ago and he chose to not address it at the time.

I also use AC as a resource and have contributed to it. I think the idea is great as long as you recognize crowd sourced information for what it is.
Click to expand...

Jeffrey responded to the accusation on the Active Captain Facebook page. In essence he said that he did not invent Kaylee and that she is a real person who has been cruising the PNW for going on 30 years. He has no explanation of why the guide and her comments are so similar. Take a look at the Active Captain facebook page for full explanation.

Gordon
 
Gordon J said:
Jeffrey responded to the accusation on the Active Captain Facebook page. In essence he said that he did not invent Kaylee and that she is a real person who has been cruising the PNW for going on 30 years. He has no explanation of why the guide and her comments are so similar. Take a look at the Active Captain facebook page for full explanation.

Gordon
Click to expand...

And if that's the best defense he has, it's lousy. Same one he's used before. It's plagiarized, regardless of who did it, and once he's been told then he's just as guilty as if he had invented her. Doesn't matter. Amazing how he can delete members because they argue with him over vegan on TF, but couldn't remove plagiarized material. He'll never change. Not even in retirement, it appears.
 
BandB said:
And if that's the best defense he has, it's lousy. Same one he's used before. It's plagiarized, regardless of who did it, and once he's been told then he's just as guilty as if he had invented her. Doesn't matter. Amazing how he can delete members because they argue with him over vegan on TF, but couldn't remove plagiarized material. He'll never change. Not even in retirement, it appears.
Click to expand...


He also thinks the sun rises and sets in Facebook, people who don't use Facebook are Luddites and too stupid to propagate... and he intentionally ignores the rest of his possible market because the only good input can come from either a) people who agree with him, or b) Facebook users, if they agree with him.

OTOH, he was always civil and seemed to be engaged in e-mail correspondence... back when he did that.

-Chris
 
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