Avoid crowded, noisy anchorages with sQuiddio's new Superyacht Dodger layer

Imagine booking an ocean-front room and discovering there is an 18 wheeler parked in front of it!

The number of superyachts, which are commonly defined as vessels over 30 meters (110 feet) long, has quadrupled in the last 30 years and there are almost 6,000 of them now at sea. You don't have to sail the French Riviera or the Florida Keys to spot one of these behemoths of the sea: they are now just about anywhere. If you are a billionaire, or are willing to shell out the $100K+ a week to charter one, or are just someone who enjoys that type of scene, have at it. After all, you have the same right to be there as the rest of us cruising mortals do.

But for most cruisers, the sight of one of these monsters approaching our anchorage to drop their anchor - often not far from where our boat is - is one of the most dreaded cruising experiences. And for good reasons: their huge silhouette can block out the beautiful scenery we had just begun to enjoy, their bright lights, often constantly on, can ruin that unique star-gazing experience we were looking forward to.  And what to say of the constant din of their generators? Or the loud parties with music blasting until the wee hours? Or the jet skis, the banana boats and the other noisy water toys which seem to be part of the standard carriage requirements for a these super stinkpots?

Finding superyacht-free anchorages

Sometimes I feel like finding an anchorage free of superyachts has become part of my standard route planning routine. And because helping with route-planning is sQuidd.io's mission, we have created the Superyacht Dodger layer: simply put, the layer will highlight all the Points of Interest (marinas, anchorages etc.) where a superyacht (or the occasional large cruise ship, another unwelcome companion of many an anchorage) is currently checked in. The presence of at least one of these types of vessels will show up in the map view as a small red icon overlaid to the POI.

Here's an example of what a section of the French Riviera around Cannes on a typical late July day appears when the layer is active. We have deliberately chosen arguably the busiest of cruising spots to show that, even in these circumstances, there is some hope of finding a reasonably quiet anchorage!.

 

As always, please let us know if you find this new feature helpful, what could be done to improve it and, in general, how you feel about this particular issue as a cruiser, by adding to the comments below.

Follow your favorite vessels around the world with sQuidd.io

If you are familiar with the sQuidd.io plugin for OpenCPN, you have probably used the popular Log Sharing feature, which allows you to follow a select number of boats around the world right on your navigation Chart, as well as send regular position updates from your own boat so that others can see where you are.

With the introduction of the new web site, we have added a couple of useful features to make the user experience a bit smoother than previously:

- the process of adding and deleting boats to your follow list has been streamlined significantly. You can now just tap on the follow this vessel button on each boat's page on squiddio (which you can locate by searching on the vessel's name or MMSI from the home page, or find in the Vessels section of a Point of Interest (POI) web page etc).  (Conversely, just tap on the Unfollow button at any time to delete the vessel from your follow list.)

- you can now follow the boats in your follow list directly on the web site, when you are not using OpenCPN. Just select the relevant option from the Layers pull down on the map in the Home Page.

Remember that you can only follow vessels that are either:

- sharing their position through the sQuidd.io OCPN plugin

- broadcasting their positions through and AIS transponder (provided the signal is picked up by an extensive network of land station)

More on how to set up and use the Vessel Follow feature on our FAQ

Not your grandfather's sQuidd.io!!

Let's face it...the squidd.io site had grown a little old and a little stale. It was high time for a change, so change it we did. And what an upgrade it is!

Take a look at the new web site: you will immediately notice an entirely new paradigm: the home page, the center of the application, has been replaced with a map that features multiple spatial data layers that can be selected on and off. 

Of course, the ever-growing repository of 30K+ navigational POIs (points of interest, such as marinas, harbors, ports, anchorages etc) is still the centerpiece of sQuiddio, but we have made it a lot easier to explore the database by dragging the map and zooming in and out.  It's also become a lot easier to add, edit and delete POIs, a process that was admittedly a bit clunky and counter intuitive in the old web site.

We have also added a number of layers that had become popular features of sQuiddio in the past, but were not available in a cohesive and comprehensive manner: satellite maps, which can now be easily downloaded in bulk for a specific area, vessels in your Follow List, which you can now create an update with just a tap (gone is the old cumbersome invitation process), weather beacons, AIS Navigation Aids etc. 

Finally, we took advantage of the redesign to make the web site a lot faster, responsive, and suitable for the variety of devices being used by the sea-going community of squiddio users.

In a nutshell....easier to use, a lot faster and more importantly, a lot more useful!

Take the new squidd.io site for a spin and send us your thoughts!

New: One-click download of Satellite Maps for any Point of Interest

 

Enhance your charts with the visual cruise-planning benefits afforded by satellite images. View detailed satellite maps of marinas or anchorages.

If you have ever approached an unfamiliar marina, or anchorage, with a slight apprehension due to insufficient or outdated details on your chart, fear no longer. With the latest release of the sQuidd.io plugin, you can now download up-to-date Google Maps satellite images directly from OpenCPN and watch them render right on your chart, perfectly overlapping your raster or vector chart.  

Google Maps download for sQuiddio Points of Interest (POI) has been available for sometime from the squiddio web site. For OpenCPN users, however, this approach required a few extra steps (locating each POI on the web site, selecting the zoom level, copying the KAP file to the correct OpenCPN chart directory, updating the chart database).

You can now zoom in on one or more marinas, anchorage or any other type of sQuiddio POI, right click on the chart and select sQuiddio: Download Satellite Images for POIs from the contextual menu. Wait for the chart database to update and there you have it!

The how-to...

If you don't have the sQuiddio plugin installed, OpenCPN version 5.2 has a easy new way of downloading plugins in a semi-automated fashion through their new Plugin Manager (if not, you can always follow the instructions on the OpenCPN page).

Once you have the plugin installed and activated, to download Google maps for a set of POIs:

• Zoom in/out in your viewport so that only the POI(s) for which you want to download maps are shown
• Select sQuiddio: Download Satellite Images for POIs from the contextual menu. A separate map is downloaded for each POI and for each level of zoom specified in the Download tab of the plugin settings. The plugin follows the Google Maps zoom levels, the default values being 17 ( ideal for, e.g., seeing the layout of a marina ) and 15, useful when planning an approach to an anchorage or marina. You will be provided an estimate of the size of the compressed file to be downloaded, and asked to confirm the download.

The Chart Database will be automatically updated when the download is complete and the Google Maps will appear on your chart (Note: if you have created a Chart Group for your Google Maps, you may have to close out and relaunch OpenCPN in order for the maps to show)

To change the zoom levels of the Google Maps to be downloaded, as well as the directory where you want your maps saved (maps are saved as raster files in the KAP format), click on the sQuiddio plugin icon in the toolbar and go to the Download tab

You can also choose to download a Map to cover the entire viewport, in addition to the individual POI-specific maps. See the option Include Viewport Map in the Downloads tab

Wind and wave data from a buoy near you

With the release of OpenCPN 5.2, the sQuiddio plugin has also undergone a major upgrade, adding new functionality such as one-click Google Maps download for all sQuiddio Points of Interest,  NMEA logs data sharing etc. More on these in upcoming blog posts or on the Quiddio plugin manual on OpenCPN.

The new super-handy feature we wanted to highlight today is the addition of NDBC Buoy reports right in your OpenCPN chart. Check out the lastest wind and wave conditions for locations near you before you cast off!

NDBC Buoy reports hold wind, wave, and other marine data collected by the NOAA National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). The data are collected from NDBC moored buoys and from C-MAN (Coastal-Marine Automated Network) stations located on piers, offshore towers, lighthouses, and beaches. Parameters reported by both buoys and C-MAN stations include air temperature and pressure, wind speed and direction, wind gust, and sea surface temperature. The buoys (and a few C-MAN stations located on offshore towers) also report wave data, usually including wave height, wave period, and wave spectra. 

NDBC Buoy reports are downloaded and displayed on OpenCPN charts by means of a new round, organge sQuiddio marker. Clicking on the marker will display the latest 24 hours worth of data available for the buoy.

To view buoy reports on your chart, activate the sQuiddio plugin (make sure you have varsion 1.3 or greater), then turn on the NDBC Buoy Reports checkbox in the View tab of the plugin settings. 

If you don't have the sQuiddio plugin installed, OpenCPN version 5.2 has a easy new way of downloading plugins in a semi-automated method through their new Plugin Manager (if not, you can always follow the instructions on the OpenCPN page).

Buoy reports are handled just like any other Point of Interest in the sQuiddio plugin. Just right click on the relevant area of the chart and select sQuiddio: Download (Update) local Points of Interest from the contextual menu.

Important: the data is cached locally with each download, and available offline if you lose your internet connection. To view the most recent reports, you need to download the POIs again (in other words, no automatic updates of Buoy Data!).

Also, most buoy reports currently available for the United States, though there is a sprinkling of buoys around the world as well, and coverage appears to be expanding as the NDBC adds new partners, such as the British MetOffice. 

Let us know if you enjoy this new feature and perhaps suggest ways to improve it.