Pilot Guides & Almanac use in decline?

[Scillypete]

That's far from my experience in the various books I've invested in. Many of the errors cross editions too, as I found when comparing my Scillies pilot with one two editions newer on a trip last year.

that’ll be the Imray one then I assume

 

[westhinder]

Pilot books and Reeds are the basics for me.
I may supplement that with what is available on the internet, but I do not expect to rely solely on the www any time soon.
It is true of course that pilot books and almanacs contain mistakes , which are reproduced If no-one takes the trouble to send in a correction. But at least you can be sure it has been sub-edited and proofread. Internet sources are varying in quality, to put it mildly and in most cases you have no way of knowing which quality checks have been applied, if any.

 

[capnsensible]

Many reasons, the main one of which is that I have a pretty good career elsewhere. Another being I'm not destined to be a YouTube star or even a content creator. I do have a popular channel but popular here is in the context of big data analytics, so it's an easier, more forgiving audience who don't expect much in the way of storytelling


Unfortunately it's not as simple as that. The Internet can't be treated like a book so your approach needs to change. You're not looking for a pilot guide on YouTube, you're looking for videos of people sailing in the Canaries. In those videos you'll see entrances and anchorages, and get comments on local knowledge as well as being shown facilities. You might need to look around a bit and get used to making quick decisions about whether content will be useful. Until someone creates a replacement organisation for the likes of Adlard Coles or Lorie Norie and whatsit to bring the content into a single place it'll be a bit harder to find. At this point I don't hold much hope of the book people understanding the new media platforms so my expectation is that they will die off along with the magazines (sorry YBW!) and new organisations will be born. Unfortunately it's a build it and they will come situation so someone needs to make a bunch of content before they'll start to make money. The potential money is certainly a pot worth chasing though!

Indeed that's exactly what I found. Videos of people sailing around the Canaries. Not pilotage.

There is an excellent pilot book published here, but it was a one off. I know how useful it is to get corrections, so I suggested a few but there has been no second edition.

If I ever produced a video pilot, I would use drone footage. I would show charted information. Where the office is, where to get stuff fixed, is there wifi yadda yadda. Indeed an electronic book with bells on. But as I mentioned, it all depends on fickle advertisers. Lots of pain, little gain.

 

[lustyd]

If I ever produced a video pilot, I would use drone footage. I would show charted information. Where the office is, where to get stuff fixed, is there wifi yadda yadda.

And with such structure it would end up so unentertaining that it would make almost no money. New media, new methods. It's why TC won't survive on YouTube the way he thrived in print. I'm hoping Uma, Delos, Vagabonde, someone who gets the medium has a bash at this. Even Dylan Winter was a good example of how to use the medium, but he misunderstood the economics unfortunately and disapeared into the ether. He'd have been a millionaire by now and covering the Canaries or the Med if he'd carried on and trusted YouTube with the content and the money.

 

[mrming]

I’m a (relatively) younger member for this place (early 40s!) and only keep paper charts on board as a back up. For tides I use a mixture of the Imray Tides Planner app and Navionics. I do use the various pilot / nav books though, including East Coast Pilot and Crossing The Thames Estuary, but I no longer use Reeds. I use YouTube videos to preview places I haven’t been before, and if it looks tricky I’ll keep a copy of the video downloaded on board to refresh my memory. I also use what I call the sailing tourist guide books, such as East Coast Rivers, to get a flavour for what places are like. I occasionally use visitmyharbour.com as a cross check for pilotage info. I always follow the guidance for a port or harbour and radio / call ahead if required. If going into a marina I want to know what side I’m mooring to in any case. Like others above I’m always amazed by the people who just show up and grab the nearest empty berth or buoy unannounced. There are plenty of them too.

 

[KompetentKrew]

Until someone creates a replacement organisation for the likes of Adlard Coles or Lorie Norie and whatsit to bring the content into a single place it'll be a bit harder to find. At this point I don't hold much hope of the book people understanding the new media platforms so my expectation is that they will die off along with the magazines …

Explore with Imray looks promising.

I find today the coverage has now expanded from UK-only to cover France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway and Kattegat.

Explore appears have all the content that's in Imray's hardback pilot guides, the Shell Channel Pilot and so on.

Not sure if I'd pay full price for it at this stage, but I'm tight - a year's subscription is only 20% more than a new pilot guide, so might well make sense for someone who needs two books for their summer cruise and who wants to be up-to-date.

UI is very smooth - although I have some niggles with it (escape key should dismiss images or chartlets, and I'm not sure about the integration of community contributions) it's very easy to zoom in and out and find the information you're looking for.

Screenshots:

Just did a quick screen recording - you'll need to view it fullscreen and, although Explore works on tablets and phones, I'm not sure how well the my video will display if your screen is much smaller than my laptop's.

 

[dgadee]

Sailing from NI to Greece I wanted costs for marinas (I am tight) but so often my up to date almanac was not up to date or accurate with prices. Very annoying.

 

[capnsensible]

And with such structure it would end up so unentertaining that it would make almost no money. New media, new methods. It's why TC won't survive on YouTube the way he thrived in print. I'm hoping Uma, Delos, Vagabonde, someone who gets the medium has a bash at this. Even Dylan Winter was a good example of how to use the medium, but he misunderstood the economics unfortunately and disapeared into the ether. He'd have been a millionaire by now and covering the Canaries or the Med if he'd carried on and trusted YouTube with the content and the money.

I'm afraid you rather misunderstand. This is not for entertainment. It's not to sit and watch with a bag of popcorn.

Pilot guides are professionally produced navigation aides detailing safe approaches to harbours for Mariners and what facilities are available. The blog stuff is interesting but most definitely not what is required for a seaman like navigators companion. I'm surprised that people would put their trust in what effectively are holiday snaps.....

 

[michael_w]

I annotate my pilot books with my own notes and findings, almost making them a personal rutter.

Our chief navigator, SWMBO insists on an annual almanac.

 

[doug748]

We are avid readers & users of these things. However, on our cruise this year we've met people who don't know they exist, people that don't use 'em and those that seem to just turn up and do as they fancy without calling in when required and so on.

Does anyone else find this? Is it a tendency to expect free info on t'internet rather than paying for guidance? I'd be loathe to lose the carefully edited and illustrated guides in favour of some bloke on YouTube!

Pilots are a funny cross between general guide books and technical publications, so if you want to replace them on t'net, you really have two things to look at. The holiday guide aspect is well covered in YouTube (etc) and the technical stuff is also, kind of, available albeit you may have to pay and root around a bit. I enjoy YouTube but never saw much that was even vaguely useful as a pilot, it would be a labour of love with little return and very difficult to update.
I guess one of the earliest web based efforts was Visit my Harbour; there was also one, subscription free, on line pilot that launched and then almost immediately evaporated. There was also a guy who had gone into most South Coast harbours with a VHS video camera on his shoulder and sold his cassette tapes as pilots, at boat shows back in the day.
Imray EXPLORE, reveled in KometentKrew's post, looks a very promising effort to unite the two aspects.

I can see that publishers would dearly like to lock people into a subscription model. This won't appeal to many old farts and there is evidence that books remain popular with everybody so I guess the main upshot of the lot will be that printed pilots will carry on but become more expensive, web based stuff will get better for which you will pay regularly and that those who tend to muddle on will continue as they are.

.

 

[prv]

I'm afraid you rather misunderstand. This is not for entertainment. It's not to sit and watch with a bag of popcorn.

I think Lusty's point is that if it doesn't also have popcorn value, it won't get enough of an audience to be financially viable, or even well enough known to find many "serious" users.

I'm surprised that people would put their trust in what effectively are holiday snaps.....

If a photo shows what I need to see, it doesn't matter why someone took it.

Pete

 

[Snowgoose-1]

Difficult to see where the money is going to come from to keep paper based pilots going.

 

[Bristolfashion]

I annotate my pilot books with my own notes and findings, almost making them a personal rutter.

Our chief navigator, SWMBO insists on an annual almanac.

Nice use of the word "Rutter"!

Mr & Mrs Bristolfashion appear in a photo in "The Shank Revisited : A Rutter for anchorages in Tasmania's Southwest". Boy, was that an experience!

 

[BobnLesley]

We've always carried a hard copy of the best/most up to date Pilot Book we could find for the area we're in - though once you stray from the beaten track, that's often not that new or good - along with at least basic paper charts. We find both are better for planning purposes than looking on a computer screen and also provide a safety net/back-up should the electronic options fail.
However, over recent years we've increasingly found that we're using the online alternatives for any detailed/more up-to-date information that we need; the most useful are usually a collection/collation of crowd sourced information/opinion, so you need to be a little wary, but you soon learn whose comments/posts are worth reading and those that're best ignored.
I don't think we've owned a hard copy almanac since we left the Mediterranean, though rather than go on-line each time we need tidal data, we download a month or more in advance and have occasionally printed-off 'just in case' hard copies too.

 

[BobnLesley]

Difficult to see where the money is going to come from to keep paper based pilots going.

Particularly when you see/hear how many people have got themselves 'a PDF copy' of any new Pilot Book relatively soon after it's first published.
It was some years ago - Med, about 2011 or maybe 12 - when we saw a chap was wandering around a popular yotty's taverna in Greece trying to flog pirate copies of the latest Imray Greek Islands Pilot Book; he didn't get much joy when he approached the tall Kiwi bloke wearing a battered cowboy hat to ask if he wanted one. ?

 

[Daydream believer]

The first time I went round the UK, I bought pilot guides for the entire journey , except my own east coast. I have purchased the Shell channel pilot twice in the last 20 years & always have it on board. I have pilots for the French, Belgian & Dutch coasts, but they are now well out of date. The Channel pilot is full of info - such as- where the launderette is, the best departure times, or comments on entry departure, or leading marks & buoys etc I even include some info on where I have encountered pots offshore ( ie Le Havre to Barfleur there is a patch)
I do buy charts every 4-5 years for areas that I am sailing- ie down to the channel islands & along to the dutch coast. Further than that my old ones have to do. I buy the Thames estuary one & the Southern N Sea one every 2 years.( Covid years excepted)
I buy the full reeds every year- Just bought the 2022 one & labelled the pages I need to refer to. (I still have a 1970s copy in case a crew decides to give birth) . I also highlight the ports I go to in the index page so that I can find them quickly.
Sad-- but I like to practice my navigation skills & not lose them through lazyness. I cannot get on with smart phones & ipads. Probably why I like my Yeoman plotter nearly as much as my 2 year old Garmin 9 inch display

 

[Wing Mark]

Pilots are a funny cross between general guide books and technical publications, so if you want to replace them on t'net, you really have two things to look at. The holiday guide aspect is well covered in YouTube (etc) and the technical stuff is also, kind of, available albeit you may have to pay and root around a bit. I enjoy YouTube but never saw much that was even vaguely useful as a pilot, it would be a labour of love with little return and very difficult to update.
I guess one of the earliest web based efforts was Visit my Harbour; there was also one, subscription free, on line pilot that launched and then almost immediately evaporated. There was also a guy who had gone into most South Coast harbours with a VHS video camera on his shoulder and sold his cassette tapes as pilots, at boat shows back in the day.
Imray EXPLORE, reveled in KometentKrew's post, looks a very promising effort to unite the two aspects.

I can see that publishers would dearly like to lock people into a subscription model. This won't appeal to many old farts and there is evidence that books remain popular with everybody so I guess the main upshot of the lot will be that printed pilots will carry on but become more expensive, web based stuff will get better for which you will pay regularly and that those who tend to muddle on will continue as they are.

.

Youtube is quite a lot of mobile phone bandwidth, not going to work everywhere.
Things you have to subscribe to would be something I'm keen to avoid.
I think I want my boat to be self contained, with the info needed aboard and accessible when I set off.

One theme which has run through a few discussions is that it would be nice for everything on the boat to be in good enough order and sufficiently straightforward that I could lend the boat to reasonably competent friends without having to give them long lectures on the quirks of the electrics or how to extract the data from some obscure corner of a tablet.
I have a few friends of YM standard who either don't own boats or live in another part of the UK.

 

[lustyd]

I'm afraid you rather misunderstand. This is not for entertainment.

I really don't misunderstand. I am familiar with both formats and quite comfortable that I get more useful information from Internet sources than from pilot guides. Professionally produced in this instance simply means someone was paid to compile a bunch of information, not that they did so in a particularly thorough or useful way, neither is it a guarantee of quality. I mentioned issues in the Scillies Pilot spanning at least three editions and someone I've never met knew about those issues - that suggests something quite different to professional and trustworthy to me.
If you spend the time to learn and understand the new medium you will get similar value. If you choose not to then that's your choice, but don't suggest that the medium is not up to scratch until you actually understand it.

 

[lustyd]

I think Lusty's point is that if it doesn't also have popcorn value, it won't get enough of an audience to be financially viable, or even well enough known to find many "serious" users.

Exactly that. Step one is getting the business model sorted, and free is how that works these days. Imray will fail because they're trying to push the same old tired subscription model that nobody can justify, and then copying their same old tired info accross. Maybe they'll surprise us this time, who knows? Ultimately though, someone with storytelling skills, cinematography skills and the ability to properly use cameras and microphones to create a narrative will win out here. All the info can be presented in an engaging way, and that's likely to drive people to try out new places more than a book that lists that there are toilets at every harbour and shows a picture of where the rock is which nobody was going to hit anyway because it's on the chart plotter. It would also be hard to talk about non existant restaurants in video format without it being obvious that there is in fact no restaurant.

 

[Poignard]

I buy the "Bloc Côtier - Manche Atlantique, Guide nautique du plaisancier, cartographie marine et plans de port"

Seems OK for the area I cruise in.