It’s been a while since we’ve had a newsletter for users of Skipr.net. A bunch of things have happened since we “spoke” last. For most of you, this will be the first newsletter, as we’ve more than doubled the number of boats on Skipr.net since the last one!

In this Newsletter:

Skipr Plus
New Features
Boat Photo competition
Notable Tracks
Island Cruising

[...]

Over the past couple of years, Skipr.net has developed into a service which is valued by an ever increasing number of boat owners, their friends and family. Since this time last year, we’ve doubled the number of registered users, introduced the first version of our Smartphone/iPhone App, built more social features into the boat pages and implemented many “under the hood” enhancements.

Skipr.net has been a ‘labour of love’ since 2005 and the plan is to continue to expand its reach and functionality. While we feature some advertising and sponsorships (thank you, Boat Books), we now need profesional assistance with the website, which is beyond what we can afford with only modest advertising income. So we’ve been considering various options for getting funds to invest in the further development of Skipr.net.

After much deliberation, we have decided to:

• Continue to offer use of Skipr.net for free, we want to be open to all comers.
• Implement a Skipr Plus programme with additional benefits for those who are willing to contribute to the continued operation of Skipr.net
• Offer special for-a-fee functionality for clubs who run special cruise events.

[This is the online version of an article in the May 2011 issue of the Mainsheet, the monthly magazine of the Coastal cruising Club of Australia. This month it is a bit self-referential, but I thought I'd put it up here anyway - MC]

This month, we’ll take a look at skipr.net [1], a Website which some friends and I especially built for cruising sailors, their friends and family.

Skipr was originally conceived on a cruise to Hobart (on Belage, the yacht of CCCA member Peter Style) in 2006. A friend had helped me build a Google map which showed the boat’s position. Having Internet access on board made it practical to build a Web based service which let others know where you were and what was happening along the way.

Today, it has matured into a popular service for cruising sailors who like to keep in touch with family and friends. I’m keen to “fold” that experience back into the Coastal Cruising Club. For those who haven’t used it, here is a quick overview of how you can have your boat displayed on the site: [...]

We’re rolling out some new features today.
Rather than needing a username (and to remember it), we’re now doing log-ins with your email address. One thing less to remember.

Default Boat Page

And we’ve re-designed the boat pages, to provide a more compact layout, and importantly to allow for a picture and description of your boat.

The last 10 position reports now appear to the left of the map and the date display control is now above the map. [...]

This weekend we launched a re-design of the skipr.net website.  We’ve overhauled its user interface and laid the foundations for a range of new features to help cruising sailors and everyone else  interested in the tracking the movement of recreational vessels. This post describes a few of the new features. [...]

We’re doing a major revision of the skipr website and expect to bring it online later this week. At this stage, we’re expecting the site (including this blog) to be off the air for a few hours on Friday morning (23 July), while we bring the new site online.

We’ve been tracking yachts on this site for almost 4 years. Over the coming year, we’re expecting to introduce more ways to conveniently track your boat. Most of those features assume internet access while at sea. But we’re not forgetting internet deprived boats. From today, we’re starting a trial allowing users to submit position reports by mobile phone. You’ll still have to register your boat as per usual (here’s how), but to submit a position report, you can send us a SMS text message in the following format:

date time latitude longitude comment

[...]

Just in case you were wondering where it was… The Planet Skipr mailing list had gone AWOL and it took a while to get it up and running again. It looks like it was associated with the recent addition of the mysailing.com site. I’ve taken mysailing.com off and subscribers saw a long email this morning with the news from the past week.

I’ve been adding some items to the Skipr website and finding new ways for folks to be kept up to date.

The observant among visitors to this site will have seen the email subscription option in the right hand column.

Every day the system sends an email which lists newly posted items on a number of relevant Australian cruising sites. It makes for a very convenient way of keeping up with local cruising news.

If you know of other sites which should be included, leave a comment with the site details.

Here are the sites currently “monitored”:

• Alfreds Cruising
• Sail-World.com Cruising Australia News
• Skipr’s Notebook (this weblog)
• My Sailing - articles from Cruising Helsman etc.[added March 09]

as well as the following weblogs of Cruising boats and their owners

• Crystal Blues
• Diomedea
• Te Moana

For those “in the know”, this is a “mashup” of Feedburner‘s email subscription service, the Planet aggregator and the sites listed above which all provide”feeds”.