Useful Electronic Boat Log / Blog Tool

BlueBoatLog – I searched for a simple tool to document and share our cruise
with friends and relatives. I found and experimented with the free BlueBoatLog (BBL) and found it to be an easy to use and helpful tool.
Complete documentation of our trip can be found at:

Outbound Log https://blueboatlog.com/collection/5d3257941697ea5c54cc5bd5

Return Log https://blueboatlog.com/collection/5cd5843e88d7637f63a8fafc

Note: Daily entries can be displayed either lates first or oldest first - The links above show both displays. I found it best on longer cruises to display newest first while we were underway so those following along frequently only had to scroll down to the latest daily etries they hadn't viewed yet.


What I liked about BBL:

• It was fairly easy to use, available in Android and apple versions as well as an online website version that allowed easy editing of text and combining multi-days into “Collections”.
• BBL allows sharing of day trip and collection links with friends and relatives and the link for a collection remains the same but expands to include the latest tracks and notes as the trip progresses.
• BBL allows entry of text & photos and tracks your daily route and allows you to combine multiple days into a trip track of your progress.
• The graphic is one of the outputs of BBL (for our return trip).

Dislikes & Issues I had:

• The tool is fairly new and had a couple of issues but the developer is open to and adding features based on feedback.
• My Android phone (Samsung S9) had frequent problems stopping the track at the end of the day - when I switched to a Samsung tablet it worked well.
• While the BBL tool allows manual entry of a trip that was not tracked automatically setting the correct date presented a problem so getting it in the correct sequence was problematic. The developer is aware of this issue and promised to fix this in a future update.

For those interested, additional cruise info & articles are available from my Bacchus website in the Cruising Notes Section - Georgian Bay 2019

I'd be interested in hearing from other TFers that have used BBL or other similar tools and what they liked / disliked about them.

Nice review!

We use NEBO that has similar functionality and has been absolutely great

https://nebo.global/

Wow I really like this one. I haven't used these sorts of things in the past as I always forget to start the app on my tablet or phone, or they are buggy and crash and end up just taking more time than they're worth. But this one looks very modern and easy to work with. I'll have to give it a try!

It does take a little getting used to or discipline to start st beginning of a day trip and end when at destination but I guess I'm still trainable.
A reminder sticky at the helm helps as does keeping the phone or tablet on charge at the helm station. When firing up electronics, MFD, GPS etc. Start the log. Stop it when shutting down electronics at end of a cruise.

Bacchus said:

It does take a little getting used to or discipline to start st beginning of a day trip and end when at destination but I guess I'm still trainable.
A reminder sticky at the helm helps as does keeping the phone or tablet on charge at the helm station. When firing up electronics, MFD, GPS etc. Start the log. Stop it when shutting down electronics at end of a cruise.

Click to expand...

That was my selling point for Nebo.

Nebo has a 12v GPS cellular modem module that you mount in the boat that automatically starts and stops voyages so you never have to remember to launch an app and start or stop.

It's a nominal monthly fee, with no contract or commitment

AdmiralS said:

That was my selling point for Nebo.

Nebo has a 12v GPS cellular modem module that you mount in the boat that automatically starts and stops voyages so you never have to remember to launch an app and start or stop.

It's a nominal monthly fee, with no contract or commitment

Click to expand...

That's pretty neat, I didn't know they released that. Will have to check it out.

Do any of them do heading (as distinct from track), measure heel amount and speed, measure pitch amount and speed? I'm just thinking of what else the phone/tablet could measure with its internal systems...