While many of us dream of a circumnavigation, Frank and Karen Taylor are turning theirs into reality this summer. Frank, the author of the Google Earth Blog has been planning the trip since their last family adventure - a year-long Caribbean sail in their prior boat PatiCat.

Their new boat is a St Francis 50 Catamaran named ‘Tahina’ built in South Africa and equipped for blue-water sailing. Sarah and I had the pleasure to spend a few days with Frank and Karen on the boat during this spring’s Miami Boat Show and I’m sure boat will serve them well during their trip.

As an active advocate for Google Earth and Destin Sharks’ ‘EarthNC‘ line of Google Earth nautical content, Frank will be keeping an active multimedia blog of his trip at www.TahinaExpedition.com. He’s posted a rough draft of his circumnavigation plan below. We wish Frank and Karen the best as they start their journey and hope to meet up with them here-and-there during their trip.

The Christmas Season is in full swing and the next few weeks will feature multiple Holiday Lighted Boat Parades in Northwest Florida.

The 1st up is the Fort Walton Beach Parade on December 2nd at 6pm at the Landing on Brooks Street.

Next is the San Destin Parade on Saturday the 8th at 6pm. The San Destin Parade is visible from Baytowne Marina and the Village at Baytowne Boardwalk.

Finally, the Destin Harbor Parade will be held on December 9th at 6pm.

Our partner website, EarthNC.com has posted a Google Earth Map with more than 50 Parade Locations across the U.S.

Our partner website EarthNC.com has been scouring the web for user-generated Google My Maps of interest to boaters. They’ve started posting their finds in their ‘Featured Maps‘ section. Even better, with EarthNC’s new TakItWithMe My Maps Embedding Tool you can paste any My Map on your own website with easy links to Google Earth, a large map, and even download to GPS in some cases (see our example below). (more…)

The Offshore Super Series comes to Orange Beach this month from the 16th to the 19th. Dry pits are open at the Wharf Marina on Friday, followed by on-water tests and racing on Saturday and Sunday in the Gulf. We’ve put together a map of the race course over at EarthNC including the spectator line if you’re planning to take your own boat out to watch.

For official event information and schedules, please visit the Thunder on the Gulf Website. For more OSS race action, visit our coverage of the 2006 Championships in Destin. (more…)

We had a great time during the 2007 ABWA Billy Bowlegs Poker Run held in Fort Walton Beach last Saturday. While we didn’t draw a winning hand, we had a full day of fun and sun with great weather. Dolphins and bait schools in Destin Pass livened up our cruise. Click on the photo thumbnail to see our extensive set of poker run photos - hopefully we captured most of the participating boats. You can also see a plot of our course, complete with photo thumbnails in Google Earth via our 2007 Poker Run Network Link.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s AWBA Billy Bowlegs Poker run and have just about got our Regal 2760’s tanks topped off so that we have plenty of gas to make all the stops. To help navigate around, we’ll be using the EarthNC Plus Marine Charts for Google Earth and GooPs Pro GPS software to turn Google Earth into a nice moving map.

One of the features we like about GooPs is the ability to ‘transmit’ your position to a remote server. We’ve set up a Google Earth network link so that you can follow our position while we’re driving around for the poker run. When you load the file, look for a blue track and a green teardrop pointer showing our most recent position. The link is set to update every 2 minutes. The network link will also load the EarthNC Online marine chart for our area, the poker run stops (the big playing cards), and any geotagged photos we manage to post while driving (we’ll do the best we can).

Download the Google Earth Map link or try it out in the EarthNC Online Combined Map Viewer:
DestinSharks.com / EarthNC.com Billy Bowlegs Network Link

If you need Google Earth, you can download it free: Google Earth

The American Business Women’s Association Emerald Coast Chapter is hosting this year’s Billy Bowlegs Poker Run this Saturday, May 19th. We’ve made a special DestinSharks.com / EarthNC.com marine chart for Google Earth which you can load via the image at left or by direct link HERE - this link will include our real-time position while we’re out on Saturday. Poker run card pickup locations are marked by the Ace of Hearts icons. You’ll need Google Earth installed to load the chart.

Poker Run Information

Participants can register via a form at the ABWA Website or in person at Shalimar Yacht Basin on Friday the 18th from 11am-6pm or Saturday from 9-11am. Cost is $40 per hand or a Boat Package 4-hand special for $140. Stops include local waterfront businesses in the Fort Walton, Destin, Eglin area.

We’re planning to participate ourselves in our Regal 2760 Southern Comfort and will be ‘live casting’ our position via Google Earth (details to come later this week) so look for our DestinSharks.com transom banner and smile for our cameras.

DestinSharks is pleased to announce the availability of ‘EarthNC Plus‘ - a compilation of 677 US marine charts on a single CD for use with Google Earth. Charts are derived from NOAA ENC and Army Corps IENC digital vector charts with significant enhancements for use with Google Earth’s powerful 3D mapping engine. EarthNC Plus is being offered at an introductory price of $49.95 which includes a 12 month chart update subscription.

Following direct sales at the Emerald Coast Boat Show this weekend, we will begin shipping EarthNC Plus orders via our new website at EarthNC.com.

John Astad, webmaster for Vesseltrax.com pointed us towards his Automatic Identification System (AIS) feeds for the Houston / Galveston area. AIS is a transponder technology by which ships broadcast their basic navigational information and identity over VHF to other vessels - similar in idea to the ADS-B system for aircraft. (more…)

Google Earth’s image fetching method works great when connected to broadband internet, but current options for caching imagery for offline use are few. Last week, we came across a simple application - Google Earth Voyager - which automates the cache file generation for a selected geographic region to ensure that the Google Earth cache is properly filled with the entire area of interest. This allows you to systematically cache an area for offline use with realtime GPS. Read on for our review and some recommendations for improving the product. (more…)