EarthNC » Destinations, Trips & Guides

Erie Islands, Sandusky Bay Maps, Charts, and Weather

EarthNC — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:48:43 +0000

The Erie Islands and Sandusky are the most active boating area on the Great Lakes and feature the most boats per capita in the USA. This area is rich in history and featured large during the War of 1812 and the naval battles around Put-In-Bay Island. For modern day adventure, Cedar Point Amusement Park offers one of the best collections roller-coasters in the world.

Explore Put-In-Bay, Sandusky Bay, Catawba Island, Kellys Island and the surrounding waters of Lake Erie with our free interactive nautical map. Zoom in and local marine charts showing depths, channels, and other features will load automatically. Click on the ‘View Full Screen’ link for additional options including weather (buoys, airports, marine forecasts) in the ‘Nearby’ menu and a route making tool for drawing and saving your own trip. Use the Map Search bar to find marine businesses, hotels, or other locations.

Tampa Bay Map, Charts, Weather and Tides

EarthNC — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:51:30 +0000

A crossroads of waterways large and small. The greater Tampa Bay area has something to offer every type of boater.

Explore Tampa Bay with our free interactive nautical map. Zoom in and local marine charts showing depths, channels, and other features will load automatically. Click on the ‘View Full Screen’ link for additional options including weather (buoys, airports, marine forecasts) and tide lookup in the ‘Nearby’ menu and a route making tool for drawing and saving your own trip. Use the Map Search bar to find marine businesses, hotels, or other locations.

Chesapeake Bay Map, Charts, Weather, and Tides

EarthNC — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:44:46 +0000

The most prolific boating area on the Central Atlantic Coast, water on Chesapeake Bay ranges from large to small, and shallow to deep.

Explore Chesapeake Bay with our free interactive nautical map. Zoom in and local marine charts showing depths, channels, and other features will load automatically. Click on the ‘View Full Screen’ link for additional options including weather (buoys, airports, marine forecasts) and tide lookup in the ‘Nearby’ menu and a route making tool for drawing and saving your own trip. Use the Map Search bar to find marine businesses, hotels, or other locations.

USS Oriskany and Other 3D Ocean Models

EarthNC — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:27:51 +0000

Quickly following up on their new 3D Ocean Floor in Google Earth 5.0, Google has been populating the ocean with a unique set of 3D models of famous shipwrecks, reefs, and other objects. To tour these models, you can open the 3D Ocean Models Tour.

Near and dear to EarthNC’s heart is the included model for the USS Oriskany Aircraft Carrier that was sunk off the coast of Northwest Florida in May of 2006. We watched the sinking 1st hand from our 28′ Regal cruiser 27 miles offshore from our home port of Fort Walton Beach Florida. Our coverage of the sinking was the first major story of our new boating blog DestinSharks.com and eventually led to the founding of EarthNC two years ago to market Nautical Products for Google Earth.

To commemorate the new 3D Oriskany model, we’ve published our own special Sinking of the USS Oriskany KML file for Google Earth. Our KML includes the embedded video of the sinking, the ‘official’ location of the Oriskany as provided by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and our boat’s GPS track while filming.

If you plan to visit the USS Oriskany by boat, we recommend you not use the 3D model location as it appears to be off by nearly a mile from the published location. The model is quite realistic, but has a couple of minor errors. The hangar elevators where removed prior to sinking and the large radar dome on the aft island superstructure floated free during the sinking.

Worldwide Boating Videos

EarthNC — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:34:20 +0000

UPDATED 2/03/2010 - The Earth is 2/3rds water and judging by the huge volume of boating videos online, it’s clear that enjoying the water is a worldwide pursuit. To help put boating videos in their world context, EarthNC has put together a growing Google Earth map of boating videos drawn from YouTube. Videos are found automatically by searching YouTube for boating, sailing, and fishing keywords that also include a place description.

Getting Started

Before downloading our Boating Videos for Google Earth KML file, we suggest that you first ensure that you have the latest version of Google Earth. The file won’t work properly unless you have at least version 4.2. Get the latest Google Earth HERE.
Once you’ve verified that you have the latest Google Earth, open our Boating Videos for Google Earth KML file. This file will update with new boating videos automatically as you use Google Earth
Locations with boating videos are marked with video thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail to see videos for that location. I
For even more context to the videos, especially in North America, you can also open our EarthNC Online Google Earth file which adds charts, tides, weather, and more to your Google Earth world.

Help us Add More Videos

If you’re adding your own videos to YouTube, make sure you use their new location menu during upload so that we can automatically get the locations in the future and use good keywords to indicate their about boating or fishing.

San Carlos Mexico Nautical Points of Interest on the Sea of Cortez

EarthNC — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:09:10 +0000

The Sea of Cortez (the water between Baja California and the Mexican mainland) is a boater’s paradise offering world class cruising, sailing, and fishing. Unfortunately, the Sea of Cortez is not well charted and due to its geography (lots of rocks), contains many hazards to navigation for the unwary or unfamiliar.

To help boaters cruising in the San Carlos area (about midway up the eastern shore of the Sea of Cortez), EarthNC user Tony H. , a long-time boater in the San Carlos area, provided EarthNC a large set of his accumulated Points-of-Interest (POIs) to share to with other boaters. Tony’s POIs include hazards such as submerged rocks, local place names for many harbors and anchorages, and helpful waypoints.

This is unofficial data so USE AT YOUR OWN RISK and please provide feedback via our Contact Form or via the built-in links in the POI map to suggest corrections and/or additions. If you have your own local boating information you’d like to share with others, please let contact us.

For more comprehensive information on cruising the Sea of Cortez, Gerry Cunningham of www.gerrycruise.com offers custom charts and waypoint tables from his long cruising tenure in the area. You can also find active Sea of Cortez online message boards at www.sancarlosmexico.com

San Carlos Mexico Boating Points of Interest

Click HERE to load the EarthNC San Carlos Boating Points of Interest in Google Earth.

Don’t have Google Earth? Download it free HERE.

If you boat in this area with a laptop, you can use the GlobalSat BU-353 USB and GooPs Pro GPS to Google Earth Software sold on our EarthNC Plus page to view your position real-time in Google Earth.

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Celebrate the Holidays with a Lighted Boat Parade

EarthNC — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:02:08 +0000

For many coastal towns, Lighted Holiday Boat Parades are longstanding traditions. Most parades are open to a wide range of sizes and it’s not uncommon to see decorated jon boats ‘marching’ in line with large 50′ cruisers. We’ve put together a Google Earth map of more than 50 holiday boat parades, including their dates and links to more information for each parade. We know there are quite a few more parades scheduled – please use our Content Submission Form and let us know about ones we’ve missed so we can add them to the map.

EarthNC Holiday Boat Parades for Google Earth

If you need Google Earth download it HERE. To add the Channel markers and other marine chart information around coastal parade locations, register for EarthNC Online, our free Marine map service for Google Earth, and then load our EarthNC Online map into Google Earth.

Canoe and Kayak Put-In Locations Niagara Falls, New York Area

EarthNC — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 01:21:32 +0000

Niagara Falls was one of my family’s frequent vacation stops. I’ve carried on the tradition with my family and the falls never cease to amaze.

If you travel plans take you into the Niagara Falls area and you’d like to get out on the water via canoe or kayak, we found a great Google My Map for you. The map is called ‘Bob’s Local Put-In Guide’ by Bob Van Hise. Bob runs the paddle page for the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club which includes a list of scheduled outings. Bob’s done a great job describing how to find each launching location using local knowledge.

Use the buttons below the preview map below to view in a bigger map or in Google Earth. You can combine this map with our free EarthNC Online marine charts for a 3D view.

If you’ve found or created Marine related Google My Maps or KML files, please use our Submit Contact Form so we can feature it.

Niagara Falls area Canoe and Kayak Put-Ins by Bob Van Hise

Hampton Road Points of Interest Map by the HRPA

EarthNC — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:08:13 +0000

Hampton Roads is an area steeped with naval history. Our current boat, ‘Southern Comfort’ called Portsmouth, VA home prior to joining us in the deep south last year. The Hampton Roads Powerboat Association (HRPA) has posted a Google My Map which highlights key boating destinations in their area.

Use the buttons below the preview map below to view in a bigger map or in Google Earth. You can combine this map with our free EarthNC Online marine charts for a 3D view.

If you’ve found or created Marine related Google My Maps or KML files, please use our Submit Contact Form so we can feature it.

Hampton Roads Points of Interest by the Hampton Roads Powerboat Association (HRPA):

Southwest Florida Boat Ramps by offidle.com

EarthNC — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:06:49 +0000

We found a nice little Google My Map showing boat ramps in the Cape Coral and Fort Myers area of Southwest Florida. We appreciate offidle.com – Southwest Florida Boating Enthusiasts for making this available as a Google My Map. Since it’s a My Map, we can show it below with our TakItWithMe Embedded map service.

This area is strangely neglected in the current NOAA ENC chart catalog which means our EarthNC charts are lacking in this area unit NOAA publishes their official digital versions.

Please let us know if you find helpful Google My Maps or Google Earth boating maps around the internet so we can feature them!

offidle.com Southwest Florida Boating Ramps