Sail with New Freebooters

New technologies often lead to developments that weren’t foreseen in their early days. One that is becoming more and more common with the growth of the Internet and mobile phone networks is  ‘community-sourcing’, where groups with a common interest pool information for the common good in much the same way as Open Source programmers do for software.

Each project of this kind needs people with the necessary technical and management skills, access to the necessary funds, and the drive to sell the idea. Teamsurv appears to be well-provided with all three. It’s a community-sourced project whose goal is to provide freely-available detailed depth and position information for the shallow waters frequented by yachstmen, divers, fishermen, workboat operators - in fact, any recreational or commercial user of shallow inshore waters. Volunteers use either a software application running on their onboard PC or a hardware data logger, attached to their GPS and echo sounder.

Teamsurv’s ultimate goal is to cover any location in the world where they can find volunteers. Even now, you are welcome to submit data from anywhere, but Teamsurv are testing their system for manipulating the data (correcting for the height of the tide at the time of logging, as well as a few more subtle things) on the following four trial areas:

• UK South coast, Poole to Chichester
• UK East coast, Thames Estuary to the Wash
• France: Brittany coast including Golfe du Morbihan
• Lithuania: Curonian Lagoon, Klaipeda and adjacent coastline

One consequence of this is that the associated website is in three laguages - English, French and Lithuanian - which makes it pretty unusual.

If you sail or motor (or if your rowing boat carries a GPS and echo sounder, for that matter), why not volunteer? Once you’ve set up your PC application, or borrowed one of their hardware data loggers, all you have to do is upload the data when you get home or when you next manage to access a wi-fi point.

For details, and an interesting blog, see the teamsurv website

TeamSurv’s research is being part-funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (grant agreement no. 247998) and aims to demonstrate that the more accurate positioning made possible by the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) may permit community-sourced depth sounder information to be used as a low cost source of survey data, with comparable quality to traditional survey techniques.

I’m not going to repeat all  the hype that surrounded Jessica’s return. It was to be expected, and she handled it very well. Her sponsors will be pleased, and she has shown that she’s  not just (!) a very competent solo ocean sailor.

Here’s to a long and successful public and private life for Jessica!

It sounds to me as if the Dutch courts have more sense than I would expect to be shown by UK or US courts. I’ve just been reading Laura Dekker’s blog about her preparations to sail alone around the world, starting this summer. Most of it is about her new 38 foot Jeanneau GinFizz ketch, which sounds much more suitable for the trip than the Hurley 800 she orginally proposed to use - but there are one or two asides about the court whose ward she became after all the fracas last year.

It sounds as if they recognise that she is a sea gypsy, born on board a boat down in New Zealand waters, and not just a nutty teenybopper with access to the kind of money required to buy and equip a boat suitable for a round-the-world voyage. They have let her continue to live with her divorced father, and tried to be constructive by insisting that she take a first aid course.

However, they don’t seem to have realised that the outfit that they recommended normally runs ordinary first aid courses, intended for uninjured people who need to take care of injured third parties. Iedereen EHBO had to design a special course for her, presumably on the lines of the courses given to Vendée Globe skippers. It would be interesting to know how much it covered.  Was it just first aid, or did it go as far as teaching her how to stitch her own wounds and give herself injections?

Laura’s route plan is a world cruise with plenty of stops, including some long ones where her support team will join her and overhaul the boat. This is not a mad dash to beat a speed record, so I feel quite happy to support the venture.

I’m sorry I’ll miss most of the 21st century. It could be interesting. I’m enjoying the headlong growth in conectivity and bandwidth - which is spreading to the mobile phone networks in parallel with the Internet -  but transport is changing, too. We’re already seeing serious attempts at producing electric cars, but it’s bulk transport by sea that looks ready for real changes:

• Fast power boats only exist as toys for the ostentatious and wealthy, and for the world’s navies. In fact, some superyachts look like warships, too.
• Bulk carriers are now cruising at around 10 knots because that halves the cost of operating them. If speed is essential, distributors ship by air.
• There are various experimental vessels that use wind power to reduce costs even further. Maybe the time will come when engineless bulk carriers are towed out to sea where they continue their voyages under wind power…
• The absolute record for a round the world voyage is now held by Franck Cammas in the big trimaran Groupama, at just over 48 days and an average speed through the water of about 24 knots.  He carried no payload, but there’s no reason why a bigger vessel couldn’t do so.
• The successor to  l’Hydroptère is intended as an ocean-going vessel. What speeds can we expect from her?

I’ll be watching with interest.

Maybe I’m growing up at last. I’ve decided to try to create something useful, rather than amusing myself commenting on the boating scene whenever the fancy takes me.

lookat-harbours.co.uk was born today, 24 Feb 2010.

Who is lookat-harbours.co.uk for?

Both yachtsmen and landlubbers visiting the towns and villages close to yachting harbours in the British Isles.

What will it provide?

Permanent pages will give you contact information for businesses in these locations. Boating stuff, obviously, but also pubs, restaurants, hotels, shops and anything likely to interest visitors.

Blog pages will tell you about forthcoming events as well as providing general comment.

Simple business listings are free, and there’s a form for you to tell me about your own business or one that you’d like to recommend, so that you can fill in any that I miss.

I’m starting with the Hamble River, then I’ll expand to the other Solent harbours before spreading along the south coast of England. Unless I get a lot of help, I’m unlikely to finish that before the sailing season comes to an end - but I’ll keep adding new places throughout the winter.