Harbour ExchangeiPhone | Harbour Exchange

SailTimer – YASIA iPhone Sailing App

Ralph Varcoe — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:27:31 +0000

What does YASIA stand for? “Yet Another Sailing iPhone App”. You may be forgiven for thinking that of late we only write about iPhone apps on Harbour Exchange, and actually you may have a point. There will be other interesting articles coming shortly for people who want to spend their time sailing, out on the water, rather than fidling with an electronic swiss army knife, but for now here is a YASIA.

In response to a couple of the other articles we’ve posted on sailing iPhone Apps (including our own HarbourX) I was contacted by In Depth Navigation saying that I might like to write about their SailTimer App. This approach was lazy for a start. It’s like putting someone down as a referee for a job interview who you have never met before. My approach would always be to ensure that whoever acted as a referee, or was going to write a review at least knew something about me or the product. And why does this make me cross? Because in order to find out about the App first hand, I would need to part with £7.99 of my own money. If I’m going to be asked (or assumed, presumed, suggested) to review something, at least let me have a copy of what I’m going to write about. Does Ferrari ask Jeremy Clarkson to buy the latest car before he writes a review? No, they loan it to him.

This is why the approach from In Depth Navigation was lazy. As you already know, I think many iPhone Apps are just too expensive for what they are, and I’m not convinced I need this App yet which means I am definitely not going to part with £7.99.

So based on what I can read on their website and see from various YouTube videos, it looks quite clever. What is the best tacking angle to keep distance between current position and future, desired position as short as possible? Plug in the wind direction, speed and other variables like waterline length of your boat and the app will give you the desired angle. Overlaying this on a google map is nice and you keep track along the way with the built in GPS of the iPhone.

I can see the benefit in this App as a back up to real navigation skills and as a quick ready-reckoner while short course tacking, but there are a few things I just don’t get.

While this could be useful in short course tacking during a race where shaving the time off by sailing the shortest course may be desirable, no-one is ever going to use this (even in a waterproof pouch) during the hustle and bustle of a frenetic race
It doesn’t seem to take into account anything to do with the tidal flow, which has quite a significant impact on the course to steer and could dramatically determine how many tacks to put in and consequently whether the shortest course distance-wise is really all that relevant. In heavy tidal areas it is often faster to sail a longer course out of the main head-on tidal stream.
There is an assumption that the wind is a constant speed and angle and we all know this just isn’t the case. Good sailors will play the wind shifts to get extra lift and pointing ability in order to sail a course closer to the wind. We know that wind bends around headlands and that the wind angle is different depending on how close to the shore you are.

The App is a nice idea and I can see how it could be useful in certain circumstances. However I can’t see that it really solves a problem, and anything that is going to cost me eight quid really should justify its price by solving a real problem. If it were free then I wouldn’t mind that it is only partially specified or useful, and I’d definitely have it on my iPhone. I may even actually use it. The sad thing is that there used to be a ‘Lite’ version of this app for free, but In Depth Navigation decided to remove it saying that users preferred to have the full set of features. Really? And they are happy to pay £8 even though they don’t know what the App really does and can’t play on one before buying?

The thing that In Depth Navigation don’t seem to understand is that there are plently of people for whom this price is a significant barrier to usage. The logic of withdrawing a free de-featured version saying that most people want the fully featured version is idiotic. It is basic product promotion strategy to have a free taster to entice users to part with their cash for the all singing and dancing version (or in this case the all humming and limping version).

HarbourX – iPhone Application

Ralph Varcoe — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:52:25 +0000

Harbour Exchange and BestBoatNe.ws are now both available on the brand new ‘HarbourX’ iPhone Application. This means you can get all articles published on HarbourExchange.com and all the best news we pick daily and publish at BestBoatNe.ws directly to your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can stay up to date on the best sailing news and blog articles whenever you are on the move, or are aboard the boat.

The application also currently provides all Harbour Exchange Twitter ‘Tweets’ and more great boating information will be added over time.

The get the new application, just click on the button and you can download it for free. Happy reading.

iPhone Sailing App – Aqualights

Ralph Varcoe — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:02:58 +0000

If you’re a regular reader of Harbour Exchange, you already know I’m an apple addict and my iPhone is like a member of the family. I love playing with new applications, especially if they involve all things nautical.

The iPhone stats are impressive:

133,979 applications for download in the App Store

28,000 App Developers

iPhone users download an average of 4.8 Apps per month each

75% of Apps downloaded are free, with only 25% paid for

Including all free Apps, the average price per App is £1.69

Each App Store user spends an average of £2.73 per month on Apps

In December 2009, $250 Million in revenue was generated, over 70% of which went to the developers themselves.

For a couple of interesting images showing the wonder of the iPhone and Apps business click One and Two.

With a cut of $250M on offer each month it is no wonder that developers with a passion for sailing are creating offerings for us addicts to feed our habits. But are these any good? In the previous post ‘Top Sailing Applications for the iPhone’ I said I’d be unlikely to use any of the Apps on board, especially if it is rough and wet (which is normal in the UK!) and I’d add that trying to use an iPhone with sailing gloves would be like trying to thread a needle with boxing gloves on; definitely not something I’d do with a ‘member of my family’.

Nevertheless, there are uses for the Apps while on dry land, not least of which is to help learn the dreaded Colregs for the RYA Yachtmaster Exams. So when Harbour Echange was sent a message by Aqualights on Twitter letting me know about their new App I thought I’d take a look.

AquaLights – £3.49 from the App Store

In their marketing message on their website they say:

Never be confused by a vessel’s lights again. AquaLights contains an extensive database of modern navigational lights, which can easily be search using our innovative 3-light drilldown system.

Massive Depth
AquaLights contains hundreds of navigational lights in its database covering inland waters, rivers and the Great Lakes.

Quick & Easy
Simply enter the top three lights you see. AquaLights does the rest and presents you with its best guess(es) at what you’re seeing.

By Mariners for Mariners
AquaLights has been tested extensivly to ensure that quality is top notch. We’ve made sure that its best guess is the right guess.

What do we think?

This looks interesting. For anyone who has sailed at night will know, it really can be very hard to know what all the shining lights and reflections mean. A friend of mine was sailing out of Milford Haven at night and thought the lights were just one of the static rigs, only to discover it was a very large moving object heading straight for him. Thankfully disaster was averted but you get the point.

Anything that can help us be safer at night has to be a good thing and AquaLights can help. The developers claim that it’s database will give you a number of options for any light configuration, and that’s probably the best you can hope for since this cannot be a precise science. The input interface looks clear and easy to use and the output will certainly help any student learn the Colregs.

You’ll notice that I say the ‘developers claim…’ and ‘the input interface looks….easy to use…’. That’s because I haven’t bought this App – for one very good reason. You see, when 75% of Apps are free and when the average App costs £1.69, and when my average spend per month is £2.73, I just cannot justify spending £3.49 on this App. That is more than double the average cost or 30% more than the average monthly user spend.

Compared to the cost of boating it is a drop in the ocean and most of us could afford it, but then compared to a Sunseeker, a Ford Fiesta is like the loose change you’d find down the back of your sofa, so that’s not the point. The point is that compared to some other sailing Apps that are either free or 59p each, it is very, very expensive.

Photo & Video Walls

Ralph Varcoe — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:25:43 +0000

We have just added the coolest feature possible to Harbour Exchange. Now there is a ‘Photo Wall’ and a ‘Video Wall’. These are just too cool for school because they use something called Cooliris and if you’ve never used it before you’ll soon be addicted to flying down your 3D wall to find new content. It is one of my favourite web tools and I have it installed on both my iPhone and as an extension to Firefox.

What is Cooliris and why is it great for people intersted in boats?

We’ve created a feed of all the latest photos from Flickr that are tagged as sailing or boating and we have done the same for all the highest rated videos from YouTube. That’s why these ‘Walls’ are great for anyone who loves sailing. Simple.

As for Cooliris, you can watch the video below to give you an idea, or you can go straight to the Video Wall or Photo Wall to see for yourself. If you need a written explanation though, here goes…..No I can’t do it justice with words. Just see for yourself and have a play.

Top Sailing Applications for the iPhone

Ralph Varcoe — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:25:11 +0000

I simply love anything made by Apple. I have acquired a white iPhone 3G, a Christmas present from my wife and daughter. It is simply brilliant in almost every way and I for one have never experienced the so called ‘iPhone Coma Mode’. I confess to not using it as a phone as such, so can’t comment on its quality in that regard, but for email, music, photos, applications and sheer ‘coolness’ it is fab. Battery life is a bit of a challenge and even without making or receiving calls it doesn’t last more than about 12 hours while out and about. Still, charging it through the Mac is easy so it’s not such a problem really.

Now, loving sailing and being an iPhone fan means I can’t stop downloading sailing, boating, navigation, weather, tide and other related applications…..and there are plenty of them. Some of them are useful, some are educational, some are fun and others are just plain daft.

We’ll look at three applications here – ‘SailSim’, ‘Knots, Splices & Ropework’ and ‘Windmeter’.

SailSim (£0.59)

This application allows you to configure the settings of your boat and then the wind speed and direction to see the impact on sail settings, heel angle, boat speed, centreboard position, etc, etc. If you have the iPhone 3GS (which I sadly don’t – next Christmas??) which has a built in compass then you can set the wind direction and by simply moving the iPhone it changes the sail setting for you. Pretty clever and quite fun. Have a look at the short video to see it in action.

In the Apple App Store there are some reviewers who complain that it isn’t actually a simulator, that it’s not worth £0.59 and that it’s very basic. As if they want the application to sail their boat for them. They are missing the point. There are two very good reasons to buy this application:

It is simply excellent to explain to novices what the impact of wind direction is on the sail set. How the higher the wind speed, the greater the leeway and the less sail area you need up. It allows you to change the mode to manual so the user can change the sail setting without changing wind direction and they’ll get a visual representation of the boat speed. As a basic teaching tool to explain the points of sailing and how it works in theory to my daughter (8), on dry land, so that she has a grasp of it before getting into a boat, it is absolutely worth 59 pence.
I spend a lot of time on conference calls, in meetings and travelling (the hell that is the corporate world!), so being able to while away the duller minutes playing with my sail settings and metaphorically transporting myself to the Solent is fantastic, and to be honest, I’d pay £5.90 (or 2 cups of London priced coffee) for the application.

You can buy SailSim from the App Store.

Knots, Splices and Ropework (£0.59)

This application could be just as useful for anyone who wants to learn how to tie knots, not just sailors. It is also a real gem. There are descriptions of all the knots you’ll need, including 154 diagrams to show you how to tie them, what they are for and it is an absolute must for any sailor, experienced or not.

The application has been criticised by those who need a fix of techy stuff, for being essentially a photocopy of the entire book written in 1917 by A. Hyatt Verrill, the American inventor and explorer and friend of Theodore Roosevelt. Frankly these critical reviewers are short-sighted and wrong (in my humble opinion).

Not only is it useful, but it is classic and I personally like the black and white hand drawings from a ‘pre-web paper-based book’ being married with the ‘gadget-techy-coolness’ of the iPhone.

At 59p it’s also worth the money.

You can buy Knots, Splices & Ropework from the App Store.

Windmeter (also £0.59)

How can an iPhone measure the speed of the wind? There are no moving parts! Well the makers of this software have obviously spent too many hours on conference calls with heavy breathers like I have. The sound of someone sighing, panting, breathing into the microphone is irritating while discussing the annual business plan numbers, but it’s quite useful when you can take that principle and apply it to wind speed. Basically, the faster the ‘sigh’ or ‘breathing’, the louder the sound, and it’s this that the makers of this application have harnessed for us sailors.

Turn the application on and you wonder why the application is upside down. Then you realise that you need the mic at the top to catch the wind and so you turn the device up on end and the application is no longer the wrong way up. Press the button and see the needle rise as the wind passes over the mic and press again once you have captured it and ‘Voila’, you have your wind speed reading.

I didn’t think this could be accurate. How can the microphone be so sensitive and accurate? If you don’t believe it either, look at this video and you’ll see the iPhone side by side with a raditional anemometer. Pretty accurate.

It may be accurate, and it may help you validate the local conditions ater checking on the ‘WindGuru’ app, but would you take it anywhere near your boat? Nope. Nor would I.

Having just spent 3 days sailing in a cold, wet, spray-laden, salty Solent in October, being tossed around in a fierce Solent chop, I wouldn’t take my iPhone anywhere near the deck. In any case we have wind speed and direction on our boat’s instrument panel so we don’t need to – thankfully!

So while this application is very clever, and accurate, it is better suited to kite flyers than sailors. Then again I suppose you could use it to measure the speed of the heavy breathing on those endless conference calls. Worth 59p? To be honest it’s such a small amount that it’s worth getting it just for the odd days when you really want to fly your kite.

You can buy Wind Meter from the App Store.