Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Tuesday Tips #14 - A Good Log Book

We were on a good friend's boat and he made an entry in his logbook which was a calendar. We were intrigued. He told us it's the easiest way for him to remember to write entries After a little experimenting we ended up buying the At-A-Glance Weekly/Monthly appointment book and have been using it for the last three years.

The At-A-Glance has a section for each month that's a two-page month calendar with large blocks for each day. We use that for general entries like, "Had sundowners with..." After the month calendar spread, it has columns of hourly entry lines, one column for each day with a week taking up a two-page spread. When we're underway we use these pages to log our watch changes, to log GPS position, and to log destinations and alternates. When we're not underway we log whatever chores we did or major projects. When we're in the middle of a summer refit like we are right now, we log detailed info about the projects we're working on. In the back of the book there's a section for future planning which we use to log our diesel, gasoline, and propane purchases as well as our water usage and pumpout records.

The book is reasonably priced, easy to write in, and stores easily in our nav station. If you balk at the price of marine logbooks, this just might be the solution for you.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Tuesday Tips #13 - Data Management

We're fortunate enough to have a really large data plan with Verizon, a benefit that comes from being with them from the very beginning of cell phones. Yet, still we come close to using it all before the month is up and have to manage our use. There are some very simple things you can do to help along those lines:

  1. Turn off your mobile data at night so apps don't run in the background
  2. Turn off your automatic update of apps, even over wifi because if you're using a hotspot it will update when it's connected to the hotspot.
  3. Turn off the autoplay of videos in your browser and on Facebook.
  4. Download the Opera mini browser. It has a data save function that blocks some ads.
  5. Download a data tracking widget to your front page on your phone or iPad so you're always aware of how much you have left.
  6. Use the app ShareIt to move photos and videos from you phone to your computer or between phones. It moves them without using data.
These are just a few basic things to try to reduce your data usage. When we go to the Bahamas we make drastic cuts and do with just 4gb of data per month, but then we have some incredibly beautiful water, sky, and beaches to look at and explore so who wants to be staring at a screen anyway?