SeaRef, a nice product found weirdly

I learned about SeaRef the hard way, when its developer Dan Podell tried to advertise it by posting messages on the PMY forums. That’s a no-no there, and here too, but I did contact Dan to tell him that I’d be happy to have a look at his CD full of nautical info. I’m doing that right now, and am impressed. SeaRef is a well organized compendium of useful calculators, tables, and publications. The example above is a page from a hyperlinked .pdf version of the BC Sailing Directions. You can learn more about the CD’s contents, or buy it, at Podell’s eBay site.

You may realize that most, maybe all, of SeaRef’s contents can be downloaded for free from various web sites, but I’d say that Podell is charging a very reasonable fee for finding it all and organizing it with .html pages. You may also realize that the SetSail.com Navigator’s Library is a similar product. I tried an earlier edition of that product and note that it now comes on 2 CD’s and contains a number of items missing from SeaRef, like the complete Bowditch, the CIA World Factbook, and numerous Sailing Directions for areas outside North America. On the other hand, it’s more expensive and at least the edition I tried had a fairly obnoxious copy protection scheme. SeaRef is unprotected and has items NL doesn’t, like a Medical Handbook (oriented to ships, like much of this material, though still useful), flags of the world, and much more.

PS If you have a marine electronics/navigation product you want me to know about or try, please just e-mail me ([email protected]).