MyBoatingInfo.com – Sailing CV & Boat Register

A couple of years ago my boat sank on its mooring on the Hamble River. I received a call on Easter Sunday morning from the Harbour Master, “I have some bad news!”.

After the fastest drive possible I arrived to see the mast sticking out of the water at 45 degrees from the top spreaders. The rest of my boat was a submarine. The mooring tackle had got caught on the bottom of the bars of the piles and so when the massive spring tide sarted to flood back in, the boat was pinned down, filled and sank.

As if that weren’t bad enough, my RYA Sailing Log book along with all certificates was on board. So too were a whole bunch of papers for the boat. After a good 24 hours of marinading in fine Hamble salty silt, diesel, oil and heads water they were rather useless and lost forever.

It’s a blinking pain when you lose the originals of your qualification certificates because the RYA doesn’t keep copies centrally. You have to go back to the training establishment you attained them from and ask them nicely for replacements. I still haven’t got a replacement Diesel Engine certificate because Sunsail can’t find a record of my doing the course with them.

Losing some of the boat’s papers was also really bad. Receipts for work carried out were gone. Proof of purchase for items bought was gone. Maybe I was foolish to keep them on the boat, but I seriously never considered that my boat would go on a binge drinking spree and drown.

So I set about developing a tool called ‘MyBoatingInfo.com‘ where all these important documents can be uploaded and kept safe forever. Except that, rather than just making a document store, I thought it would be useful to enable people to create a ‘Sailing CV’ and add all their voyages and miles to their qualifications. I also created a ‘Boat Register’ so that all aspects of their boat, crew, equipment and passage plans can be logged.

And it’s so easy to get started. No new registration form to fill in. You can use MyBoatingInfo.com by linking it to your Facebook account. The whole process takes less than 15 seconds.

Here’s a little more about each section on the site:

Sailing CV

If you’re working towards an RYA or equivalent qualification, then you need to keep a log of all your miles, voyages, night hours, wind speeds, ports visited, boats sailed, trips as a skipper or as crew and days on-board. Even if you’re not working towards a qualification, you’ll want to keep a log so that one day if you do take the plunge to get your Day Skipper or Yacht Master tickets, you have a complete picture of your experience.

In addition, if you want to charter a yacht, the charter company, or owner of the yacht will want to see that you and your crew have enough experience. Think of chartering like hiring a car. With every car you hire you have to present your license, and with every charter you need to present your experience and if you have them, your qualifications.

In the MyBoatingInfo.com ‘Sailing CV’ you can log your Qualifications (inc. certificate number, date of issue, place of issue) and all your voyage details (inc. boats sailed, areas sailed in, miles, night hours, capacity in which sailing etc etc).

You can then view the overall summary (the module adds all voyages up for you) and create a pdf document as a sailing CV.

We have used the same fields for information as the RYA uses in their log books and the sailing CV provides the same information that Sunsail, one of the largest sailing schools and charter companies requests on their booking forms.

Use the ‘Sailing CV’ on MyBoatingInfo.com and you’ll always have an up to date record and you’ll save time each time you charter a yacht – just create the pdf, print it, sign it and send it with your booking form. Easy.

Make sure you upload your certificates too. This way you’ll be able to find them easily and have back up copies if you lose them.

Boat Register

MyBoatingInfo.com ‘Boat Register’ is a place where people who own a boat(s) can give it a profile and then register its details, specific equipment (along with proof of purchase) and important documents like insurance, details of registration, bills of sale and repair invoices.

The benefit of having a Boat Register profile is so that you can protect your precious possession. Imagine something were stolen from the boat, or even the boat itself. If all the details were logged in the Boat Register profile, you’ll find it much easier to prove original ownership. It will help in ensuring good provenance.

You can register contacts, boats, equipment and passage plans. These passage plans can be made public so your friends and family know where you are going, and should you get into difficulty (which we hope and pray you never do), the coast guard and lifeboat can also know what your plans were.

There is a section for reporting any boat or item of equipment stolen, and these can also be made public so that the police can see what has gone missing. Hopefully this can help in your quest to get your property returned to you.

Related posts:

1. Top 3 Ways to Go Sailing Without Breaking the Bank
2. How to Charter a Yacht