Sailing inyourfootsteps.com

inyourfootsteps.com ‘harbours’ is designed to enable the sailing community to collect and document the world’s harbours and anchorages and make the knowledge freely available to all.   All that is required is one generous individual from each local area to record and share their local knowledge, and piece by piece all the harbours of the world may be charted and made freely available to one and all.

‘Harbours’ advice should be written with a twenty to forty foot yacht, both shallow draft and deep keeled vessels, in the pursuit of sailing as a leisure activity.  Though all relevant information is welcome, please place primary focus upon assisting this type of craft into harbours, moorings and anchorages. 

Harbour or anchorage place name / title

The name of the harbour or anchorage, its region, country. 

This should be the name of the harbour or anchorage that is used on navigational charts. 

Harbour Position: 

This should be an accurate latitude and longitude waypoint for the harbour or anchorage indicating where the position was taken.  If you are uncertain where to place this please provide a waypoint from the end of the seaward pier of a harbour or the approximate midpoint of an anchorage.  This position will be placed on the site and used to provide a Google Satellite image of the harbour on inyourfootsteps.com.
There are three different GPS conventions for describing a position:
1. degrees, minutes and seconds (d m s)
2. degrees, minutes and decimal minutes (d m.m)
3. degrees, decimal degrees (d.d)
The maritime convention for expressing a position is in degrees, minutes and decimal minutes (d m.m) and this is what we use.
Most GPS offer a choice of Lat/Lon expressions.  If you have a position but it is expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds (d m s) you can convert the seconds into decimal minutes, by dividing the seconds by 60.  For instance if you have 52 deg. 38 min 17 sec. N  converts to a GPS expression of 52 38.283 (devide the 17 by 60 to get 0.283 minute).  Then input the (d m.m) into the site.

Where is that position?

This should describe in simple terms where the above Latitude and Longitude coordinate is.

What LWS draught is available?

Please state the minimum depth at LWS (low water springs), or the maximum draught for a vessel that can utilise the harbour or anchorage at low water springs. 

Please tick if you are using:

Feet 
Metres

What considerations are there?

This is the harbour or anchorage at a glance, the ‘first-take’ if you like for someone glancing through their options. 

Is it a harbour or an anchorage or both, what winds does it offer protection from, and which is it exposed to.  How complicated is it to get into or how far does one have to travel to get to it if it is an up river facility for instance.   Are facilities or berths readily available or is it isolate without any of these.  Is it light and marked so it may be entered at night? Are there any dangers (are shoals, reefs, rocky outcrops, strong tides, overfalls etc) that should be considered before selecting the harbour or anchorage and planning an entry.  Also please indicate if any weather conditions that would make entry highly difficult if not prohibitively dangerous. 

The idea of this section is to give a quick overview so that the harbour, amongst many others, may be quickly accessed by someone looking for a harbour to meet a specific circumstance at hand.

How to get in?

This is a good overview of how to enter the harbour.  If the entry alters due to varying conditions, for instance tides or winds, please provide relevant practices to deal with these. 

If lights, beacons, buoys, or additional GPS waypoints are available please refer to them and any other helpful information to make the entry safe.

Are there any current notifications?

These are specific harbour or anchorage navigation events that are of a short duration.  For instance if a small boat harbour is closed for dredging and unavailable for berthing for a specific period, or buoys are removed for maintenance, leading lights are out of service due to storm damage, a wreck is causing an obstruction etc.  Where possible please state the expected start (if a planned future event) and end period for these notifications.

What facilities are available?

This is an overview of the facilities available in the harbour.  These can range from, harbour, dinghy pier to repair facilities, shops, pubs restaurants.

What emergency contacts are there?

Please provide as much information as you can cater for a range of situations.  For instance the coastal VHF monitoring station to poll and their working channels, and Coastguard contact details.  Also if possible any details on the local Harbour Master if applicable, Medical Services etc.

Why visit here?

Good reasons to visit the location from a maritime and communications perspective.  For instance a good picturesque bay, highly serviced harbour, excellent road connections or train, bus services airports etc. 

However in addition to this inyourfootsteps.com is based upon the premise of sailing as a leisure activity that includes visiting unique and wonderful locations with interesting history and local cultures.  This section enables you to share an overview of the regional sites, scenery, history and places of local and cultural interest.   It may be a good place to take a boat you should also mention, where applicable, that it a place to spend some time and have a wonderful and rich local experience.

So please help bring people to your local area by telling them about the things they can do and sights to see whilst they are there.  Information like this makes a cruisers stay more rewarding and pleasurable. It increases the duration of their stay, encourages return visits and makes it more likely they will recommend your area to others. 

Remember a pleasant stay can now be recorded on inyourfootsteps.com like a visitors book and a high vote will register on inyourfootsteps.com.

Security

Criminality is very difficult to predict, however we all have a level of local security awareness.  Please provide an indication of the prudence that you would personally use in this anchorage or harbour with your vessel. 

Highlight what you would or would not do, the locations that you may choose to avoid and the measures you would recommend if about in those areas if any. The objective is to provide helpful advice that prevents unnecessary upset and makes a stay much more pleasurable. 

What navigational resources are available for this area:

Please list the charts, pilots and cruising guides that you know are available for this harbour or general area. Your personal impressions of the material are welcome.

Contributor

We welcome you to take credit for a contribution, or if you wish credit another individual or business with the submission.  Place the name here or inyourfootsteps site name and any text you care to enter such as boat name, club name etc up to 350 characters. 

If you have a business or offer a service you are welcome to place the contact details here and business URL plus a note on what is offered. 

Sketch maps and pictures

If possible please provide a sketch map that helps outline the layout as an aid to understanding a location.  Linking the instruction that you have introduced to this will be invaluable. 

Remember the sketch map is only to aid a general understanding of the harbour directions.  Its objective is to assist and overlay the local knowledge plus help identify the key landmarks upon a professional chart that the vessel is expected to be using.  We understand this could take some skills to produce but do not be daunted by this.  A contribution sketch map is not intended to be a substitute for a professional nautical chart it need not require painstaking detail, just the outline to aid understanding is all that is required. 

All pictures are welcome particularly ones showing the harbour layout, entrance and key landmarks for navigation purposes.

Please use your own images.  All other works are copyrighted by default.  If it is not your original work, photograph or drawing it is copyrighted to the original creator by default.  The only exception to this is material that fall into the public domain or their copyright is explicitly disclaimed.

Never submit materials that infringe upon the copyrights of others. A simple way to express that, don’t ever use cut and paste, write it yourself, and likewise please take photographs yourself and make your own sketches. If you have permission to use another persons work please contact us with the dated permission details.  We respect the copyright of original material and material that we find has violated the copyright work of another will be removed from the site.

Thank you

Thank you for reading the ‘Harbour’ help section.  Please continue to share your harbour knowledge.  Once complete, press the ‘submit’ button and your ‘harbour’ will be available online shortly. 

Soon we will be providing a Wiki feature that will enable any registered user to update and add to your entry.