Cruising with FindPenguins

[Marco Flamingo]

I was totally unaware of this, but my wife had seen it on a travel chat group. FindPenguins.com is a free phone app that tracks you and allows only people you have invited to follow along on the adventure. Text and photos are integrated with the tracking. It uses GPS from her phone (and about 4% more battery) to track once every 5 minutes, also linking photos and any any text she had entered. At the end of your cruise, it is possible to have the entire thing printed as a book. $85 for 120 pages, table of contents, photos, text, etc. We have done this through Shutterfly (the Outback and the Serengeti) with me as photographer and her as journalist. Time consuming to create, but really nice to have. FindPenguins.com does this semi-automatically (after your editing). If you've taken photos with a camera, those need to be imported.

She sent the stuff to my other computer, so I'll add some photos in a subsequent post. I don't think we have learned all of the options, but in talking with family and friends, they could see where we were at any time and the pictures. They could also see if we got to where we said we were going. Sort of like filing a daily float plan, which was okay given how remote we were a few times.

 

[Marco Flamingo]

Here is our overall travels to B.C. this summer. On a screen shot from the phone using FindPenguins, it is a little garbled and the line looks thick. I don't know how much this would clear up if enlarged in a book. The line is thick because it is mostly comprised of "dots" that are photo locations.

Here is a closeup of Larado Inlet and the Kitasoo/Xia'xias Spirit Bear Conservancy on Princess Royal and Meyers passage. On the computer, one can click on the pictures and see, for instance, the chart photo of Meyers Narrows (that Beth took). There is also accompanying text.

Haven't decided yet whether to make it into a book, since the trip was a complete failure. Didn't see a single spirit bear. Just regular bears. This would be a nice picture for our book.

 

[MichaelD]

PolarSteps is another similar app that works very well.

 

[BruceK]

Find Penguins? I thought they are only found in the south. The reverse applies to polar bears.