Tomorrow, June 24th, kicks off the 2008 Emerald Coast Blue Marlin Classic at San Destin’s Baytowne Marina. This year’s activities include Dockside Party, ‘mini-Gras’, and Fireworks on Tuesday at the Baytowne Marina and Village of Baytowne Wharf, another Party and the Captain’s meeting on Wednesday, Thursday fishing start and boat parade, Friday and Saturday weigh-ins, and final awards ceremony at 11:00am on Sunday.

Local Bouys and Markers

If you’ll be boating as a part of the tournament this year, here’s a quick reference map of the local area complete with main channel markers and lights, courtesy of EarthNC.com.

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…)

It’s that time of year again and we are quickly approaching Boat Week 2007 and the Emerald Coast Poker Run. We had a fun time on the water yesterday collecting up a few more pictures for our Poker Run map available at EarthNC. The map includes this year’s stops, the new Poker-Run related no-wake zones, and photos of local bridges and ramps. Look for us to be out photographing on the 18th in our Regal 2760 ‘Southern Comfort’ and check back for our photo gallery to see if we photographed your boat.

Last weekend, we got a chance to make our 1st ‘distance’ overnight trip of the 2007 boating season in our Regal 2760 ‘Southern Comfort’. South winds made for calm water in the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway as we cruised west to Little Sabine Bay in Pensacola Beach. Our boating weekend would include camping out with friends Travis and John and their family members Friday night, followed by a beach-side church shrimp boil on Saturday. Read on for our trip report and be sure to visit our photo album. (more…)

Complete Harbor Charts for the Lower 48!

Since announcing the public beta of our ‘EarthNC’ marine charts for Google Earth last week, we’ve been releasing additional charts as they exit our conversion process. Our largest release to date occurred yesterday with over 100 new charts posted. With this release, all NOAA ‘Harbor’ (level 5) charts are now available for the lower 48 states, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. We are working the level 5 charts for Alaska at present and then will shift work to convert the remaining Approach and Coastal Charts. Following this, we’ll finish the map set with the Army Corps Inland ENC (IENC) charts.

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Marine Charts as You’ve Never Seen them Before!

Since announcing the public beta of our ‘EarthNC’ marine charts for Google Earth earlier this week, we’ve been hard at work. The beta now features over 200 charts for the US including complete ‘Overview’ and ‘General’ level charts for the Pacific, Alaska, West Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and East Coast. Harbor charts now cover Florida, Hawaii, New York, Alabama, Louisiana, Washington State, California, the US Virgin Islands, Puero Rico, and more.

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Marine Charts as You’ve Never Seen them Before!

Google Earth meets the sea with EarthNC™ Marine Charts exclusively from DestinSharks.com. We’ve been hard at work for over 6 months to provide an ‘Earth’ alternative for NOAA ENC® vector charts covering US coastal waters. (more…)

With the approach of winter, hundreds of West Indian Manatees congregate in the warm-water springs which help fill the Crystal River and Kings Bay region of Florida’s western coastline. One of the larger springs is Kings Spring located in the southern end of Kings Bay just off shore from Banana Island. The spring features 2 diveable caves and is within the boundaries of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. The video shows a short snorkel swim over the spring and some friendly fish who were in the area.
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The Navarre Beach launch ramp is located on the south end of the Navarre Beach bridge about 15 miles west of downtown Fort Walton Beach. This launch facility was built by Santa Rosa county and was significantly improved after hurricanes Ivan and Dennis. Featuring 3 launch lanes and parking for over 100 trailers and tow vehicles, it easily the largest in the area. (more…)

YouTube user “DestinDiver” posted a short video of a dive on one of the Destin offshore rubble piltes. DestinDiver reports this was the old Destin Bridge rubble. Based on our Google Earth divesites map, the bridge rubble is located at 30.34717N, 86.49483W in roughly 70 feet of water which contradicts the claim of being 7 miles offshore. It is possible this is actually the “Okaloosa Pier Rubble” located at 30.32642N, 86.60323W which is 7 miles outside of the pass and would look similar. In either case, it’s a nice video of our green waters.
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