Guest Blogger Jeffrey Siegel-Active Captain
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by Jeffrey Siegel, ActiveCaptain.com
When we started ActiveCaptain we had a simple three word concept that drove everything we built into the product. It was, "Capture the conversation." As long range cruisers ourselves, we knew that the most valuable information exchanged were the informal conversations that happened at docks and anchorages between boaters. This was the information that was the most relevant and true. Because while a guidebook might specify that a marina had showers, boaters told each other if those showers were clean. And it is local knowledge like that, along with navigational hazards and anchorage details, that can make the difference between a happy crew and a mutiny.
The problem was that these conversations were fleeting and left to chance. We believed that there needed to be a way to automate and share them for the benefit of the whole boating community.
We have spent several years developing, enhancing, and nurturing a system that allows boaters to exchange many types of useful knowledge. As ActiveCaptain gained popularity, we began seeing reviews for anchorages that would say something like, "The guidebooks are wrong about the what we found in the town." Examples abound in reviews:
Deep Bay anchorage:
https://activecaptain.com/X.php?lat=44.774341&lon=-73.382749&t=n&z=14
Coecles Harbor anchorage:
https://activecaptain.com/X.php?lat=41.065374&lon=-72.293128&t=n&z=14
Vermilion Public Guest Docks:
https://activecaptain.com/X.php?lat=41.424097&lon=-82.365145&t=n&z=16
As boaters we purchased expensive guidebooks for the expertise they gave us. So how come these guidebooks were so often wrong when they are supposed to be written by experts who have familiarity with a specific area?
This got us thinking. What makes an author an expert for a particular area? It's usually someone who has some experience and can write in a way that an editor can make readable. But does that expert have experience with my type of boat? Or the specific time of year that I'll be coming through? More often than not, the answer is no. In fact, we've yet to meet an expert who doesn't spend more time behind a desk than a helm.
The true expertise in cruising today lies in the community of cruisers who are actually out there in different types of boats, in different kinds of weather, with different needs. Their conversations are exceedingly valuable. We've received criticisms in ActiveCaptain that some marinas or anchorages are given high ratings by some people and low ratings by others. To that we scream, "Exactly!" That represents reality and ends up describing the good and bad across multiple experiences.
St Augustine Municipal Marina in Florida is a great example. It's a fantastic mooring field and marina – one of the highest rated in ActiveCaptain. But it has some 2-star reviews mixed in with the 5-star. How is that possible?
It turns out that the municipal marina is very close to an ocean inlet where a large amount of water gets squeezed at a bridge right by the marina. The result? Extremely swift currents occur a couple of times a day. If you don't realize this, pull into the marina at the wrong time and get slammed into the dock, you end up writing a 2 star review – usually after someone else asks why you didn't read the warnings in ActiveCaptain. That 2 star review can help the next wave of boaters who will read the reviews before they come in and wait an hour to experience less current. Ultimately, this is good for boaters and good for the marina.
It was a short leap from marinas, anchorages, and local knowledge to other boating areas that have experts providing us information. Boating magazines are full of articles by yet another set of experts who live behind their desks. Experts who purport to be writing for the benefit of boaters but often are biased by the reality of the marketplace and the advertising paid for within the magazines and websites.
How many times have you seen a negative boat review in a boating magazine? Is it simply happenstance that a new boat found to be without fault chose to buy a full page ad in the same magazine? The boating community is starved for real, unbiased assessments. We thought our experience with ActiveCaptain gave us a unique position to provide just such a venue.
So we started CaptainRated.com, a sister site to ActiveCaptain. It allows information to be gathered along with real reviews by boaters on different products and services. It's starting out slowly with just brokers, surveyors, and transporters being listed. It'll eventually be expanded to many types of services and products. So when you're cruising away from home, you'll be able to get info on canvas repairers in the area along with the latest reviews from real boaters about the radars they're using.
The Internet is an incredible communications tool. It is what allows us to share and write information. It has caused a dramatic shift in what makes an expert. It's no longer simply who has access to the medium. The real experts are all of us because we're the ones out there doing it.
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