Our new boat and AICW journey blog

[sea_casper]

Tomorrow we fly down to Norfolk and will be bringing our boat North to Groton and Block Island on the last installment of our trip. We plan on going up Chesapeake Bay to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to Cape May NJ and then outside to New York Harbor and then to Long Island Sound. We have now completed over 1000 mi of our trip.

I suggest looking at our Blog "http://fauxcastle.blogspot.com/" to catch up. Each day has a picture link, along with the posting.

Also on the Blog, I have added a link to a Google Earth file, on all travel days from Charleston SC to Hampton VA.

If you have Google Earth installed, clicking the tour link will open Google Earth and zoom in on our GPS track for that day, if you then expand the file in the "MY Places" area and highlight and play the tour (video cam icon) it will zoom in and follow our track from 4800 ft above.

I recommend the Dismal Swamp Day, it shows how narrow the canal is, the tours give you a better sense of what the terrain really looks like. It shows us waiting for bridges and locks as we went from Elizabeth City NC to Norfolk VA.

Let us know what you think of the tours.

Thanks

Sheila and Clarence
s/v faux'castle

 

[MJWarner]

Wow! I'm very impressed! The blog is very good, the google thing is awesome! I think it's a little beyond my capabilities, but I sure would love one of those for my boat blog. What did you use to get the track, if I could ask?

 

[sea_casper]

Download GPS tracks to PC

Wow! I'm very impressed! The blog is very good, the google thing is awesome! I think it's a little beyond my capabilities, but I sure would love one of those for my boat blog. What did you use to get the track, if I could ask?

Actually I have two GPS sources, I use a USB gps connected to my laptop running Maptech Offshore Navigator software and I also download the track from my Garmin Chartplotter, I do have to massage the files exported from Maptech, to keep time information.

I use /www.gpsvisualizer.com to convert files. I have spent more time than should be necessary, for a simple task, but one has to learn somehow.

 

[MJWarner]

Thanks for the info. I'm going to see if I can download tracks from my standard Horizon Chartplotter. If not, I may look into one of those little garmin units that hikers carry. I wonder if they would work st sea. I need to research it, because this looks very exciting for blogging from a boat.

 

[sea_casper]

Thanks for the info. I'm going to see if I can download tracks from my standard Horizon Chartplotter. If not, I may look into one of those little garmin units that hikers carry. I wonder if they would work st sea. I need to research it, because this looks very exciting for blogging from a boat.

Any GPS that you can download will work, you don't need a marine unit, you are only downloading position and time data, my USB unit receives well at the nav station. There is lots of free software around to download GPS data, the trick is to get it into Google Earth format, with position and time.

 

[MJWarner]

@ Sea_Casper:
That's good to know, because my husband has informed me that no more wires will cram up the guard tubes to our chartplotter. So I can get a handheld gps unit for a few hundred that has a usb cable, then upload to my puter. Can you give me some suggestions/links to some freeware or shareware thet will convert the files into something my puter can read and send to the Google Earth program? (If it's not too much hassle) Thanks!

 

[sea_casper]

@ Sea_Casper:
That's good to know, because my husband has informed me that no more wires will cram up the guard tubes to our chartplotter. So I can get a handheld gps unit for a few hundred that has a usb cable, then upload to my puter. Can you give me some suggestions/links to some freeware or shareware thet will convert the files into something my puter can read and send to the Google Earth program? (If it's not too much hassle) Thanks!

Google Earth will download Garmin or Magellan GPS's, see prevoius post for conversion program