This page answers all of your burning questions on "behind the scenes" aspects of this website — the cameras, the software, the tools, the technology, the writers.

If you are prefer to ignore the gory details and just want to learn about us, click here or "crew" in the menu bar at the top of the page. If you are really only interested in learning about Whisper, click here or "boat" in the menu bar.

Domain - Why sailwhisper.com?

Well, this one is easy. Whisper domain was taken. Many cruiser websites have found their boatname.com or boatname.org is already being used. Most work around this by tagging something else onto the boatname. Many use svboatname.com (s/v means "sailing vessel"), and others use sailboatname.com. We adopted the latter convention and reserved sailwhisper.com as the domain.

We do not have a good reason for a .com suffix. Someday we may sell some kind of product from the site (calendars, cards, prints, desktop wallpaper downloads) made from our best photos. For now, we nothing is officially for sale or promoted on the website.

Content & Photography

Both Robin and Duncan author website content. We proofread and "improve" each other's content. As you can tell, the proofreading process is less than precise. The best content on the site are the photographs to which Duncan gets almost all of the credit.

We build pages and write content in native HTML using an HTML editor called NoteTab Pro — an easy, inexpensive html editor acquired by download from their website.

Over the course of 2007, Robin spent a few weeks giving the old sailwhisper website a significant face lift, added the use of php (a script language) and removed the table code. The use of php makes it easier for us to implement changes to things such as format or menus in the future.

Onboard Computers

We have two Lenovo R60 notebook/laptop PC's. We use one for all the boat-related software (navigation, weather fax, email) — as well as holding the updates-in-progress copy of sailwhisper.com. The other laptop is used for all recent photos (2-3 years worth), photo editing, and Duncan's content authoring on sailwhisper. We both run Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Duncan using Internet Explorer 7, and Robin using Firefox. This allows us to test our content easily in both browsers. Robin's laptop stays on 100% of the time as the primary on-board navigation and/or anchor-monitoring computer. Duncan's laptop is pulled out and turned on only when needed/used. Both computers have 12V DC travel adapters so we don't use the inverter to charge the computers.

When working on the website, both laptops are networked via gigabit Ethernet so we can both work on the website content and pictures simultaneously.

Cameras

Duncan carries one of two Canon pocket point-and-shoot digital cameras almost everywhere. For one of the pocket-size Canons, he has an underwater housing used when diving, snorkeling, or kayaking.

The "big" camera is a Canon EOS 10D digital SLR (new in 2003). The 10D tends to be taken only on grander "photo safaris", longer hikes, or on land trips. Photos from this camera are taken in RAW format.

It was a big decision to move 100% away from slide film in 2003, but at some point we see digital approaching the quality of 35mm slide film. In the meantime, the convenience, flexibility, editing-power, and relative low-cost of digital (over film/slides) made it too good to wait — as well as perfect for cruising.

Luckily, Duncan still manages to get some decent photos using digital...

Duncan learned with our original Canon PowerShot S300 Digital Elph, that the camera needs better protection while carrying it around in a pocket. The S300 E18 error failure diagnostics indicated that after over 25,000 photos and frequent in-pocket use, the lens mechanism eventually jammed up with pocket lint! The $355 cost to repair was better spent on a newer model Canon pocket-size point-and-shoot.

Duncan keeps both new pocket-size cameras either in a case — or use a lint-free Oakley micro-fiber sunglass bag when carrying it around in a pocket. We acquired a small 2-liter dry bag for carrying cameras around in the dinghy or kayak. Photos from the IXUS50 and SD870 are taken in JPEG format.

Photo Storage

Back on board Whisper, Duncan uses a USB cable to download all photos directly onto his laptop. For processing and editing photos, we use Adobe Elements and/or Adobe Photoshop from either machine.

When traveling and away from our laptops, we carry a 60GB video iPod (enabled for disk use) with the iPod USB camera adaptor. Duncan downloads photos and videos as we travel to the iPod. When we return home to Whisper and our laptop, he moves all the photos onto the computer and into Adobe Elements.

Moving to higher-resolution digital photography (RAW format on the 10D and SuperFine Large JPEG on the point-and-shoots) resulted in frequently running low on disk storage. If you don't take many photos or use lower quality settings, you may not have this issue. Duncan gets carried away with digital — taking lots of photos on the highest quality, and seldom deleting anything. Disk space is fairly cheap, so we tend to keep 98% of everything we take and store it for posterity.

The new laptops don't have a ton of available space (70GB, of which Duncan has already used >50GB). We choose to store the bulk of the archived digital photos elsewhere.

With the new media center installed on Whisper, we gained an additional 500GB of space. Disk space should be OK for a while. Between photos, digital music, and laptop back-ups, its amazing how fast the space gets used.

In addition, we keep a back-up of everything on a separate external hard drives stored in a Pelican case.

Photo Editing

For photo editing software, Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 and occasionally, Adobe Photoshop 5.5 fill the need. For multi-user (okay, two user) networked photo-editing needs, this isn't the best solution (doesn't support a shared library with >1 user), but we make do with only minimal frustration.

For basic editing, we may rotate, crop, enhance color, or sometimes tweak the lighting in the photos. Then, we scrunch the photos to a small size and lower the quality/resolution to get them onto the website.

A 5MB to 8MB picture off a camera gets copied and scrunched down to less than about 30K bytes. We do this by reducing the size (to 320 X 240 pixels), and lowering the quality to low-medium quality (40-60%). The reason for the reduction in photo size is two-fold. First, most of the Internet cafés we use to upload the picture to the website have very slow connections. The bigger the pictures, the longer it takes us to update the website. Second, it improves page-load times for you. With some of the logs having hundreds of photos, you will thank us.

The pictures cannot be saved or printed from the website with any decent quality. If you would like any of the photos in the website in their full size and resolution for any reason, just contact us with the name and page of the specific photo(s). Duncan will post the full resolution photo to Flickr and give you the scoop on how to download them through Flickr. For taking the time to do this, we a small donation to help fund the cost at the Internet café may be requested. If you use any photos toward your own wild commercial success, we may ask for a slightly larger donation.

Publishing

Cedant Web Hosting & Domain Registration is our site hosting service. We pay about $120-$150 per year for the service. They handle the domain registration and renewals of "sailwhisper.com" domain. They also provide an FTP server which is the way we move files and photos from the laptop to the website..

When new content is ready for publication, we usually copy the files onto a USB stick and then carry it off to the nearby Internet café. Sometimes we write ftp scripts. Sometimes we use WS-FTP, a simple FTP "wizard" shareware program that shows us the progress of the copy to the website at the ISP. We run WS-FTP directly from the USB stick. This works well as long as the computer at the Internet café has (and allows) USB stick use. Otherwise, we burn a CD or DVD instead. If all else fails, we find a place allowing us to connect a laptop to their internet connection.

Blogging

Fast forward seven years after the start of sailwhisper.com to January 2008. We know many people (cruisers and non-cruisers) that now keep detailed web logs (blogs) of their life's adventures or thoughts on a site like WordPress.com and photos on a commercial photo-sharing site like Flickr. In hindsight, if some of these tools had existed in 2001, we might not have sailwhisper.com as you see it today. Most blogs, offline blogging software, and photo-sharing sites are sufficient to keep a journal of your adventures and to share them with friends and family.

We added a WordPress blog to sailwhisper.com and now post quick updates from Whisper while away from high-speed internet. We publish blog entries via an Iridium satellite phone's direct Internet connection and Zoundry (software). We don't need to be anywhere near an Internet café to do this, and it only costs a few bucks for each posting. Pretty cool.

The blog also allows us to quickly and proactively let everyone know when we publish new website content. No more need to check the site for updates every morning when you get to work. Setup a subscription to Sail Whisper's blog in your RSS feed reader. We will post a new blog when new content is added to the website. (Sorry family, there we go geeking-out again - don't worry about this).

Ideally, in the not-to-distant future, we hope to post entire logs with photos via satellite — for now, it's cost prohibitive for the average-Joe cruiser like us. Ideally, in the next 10 years, high-speed, low-cost Internet will be available to anyone, anywhere on the globe (including the middle of an ocean), at any time. This entire process would be simple AND we could Google, check IMDB, buy new iTunes music, or do our online banking from anywhere! Sweet.

It takes Time

Our biggest challenge maintaining this website has been taking the time to do it. Just one log entry — depending on how detailed we are with the weeks or months it covers — can take a full day to create, edit, and proof read. Selecting, editing, and processing pictures takes about 1/3 the total log creation time. We could try to automate and stream-line this workflow to be able to create it faster and with better quality — but that too would take lots of time to write, test, and get working to our satisfaction.

Living in Auckland's work-a-day world, we found ourselves wondering "who cares what we are doing? We're doing what everyone else in every other city is doing — living and working — we just happen to live on a boat. Big deal. Let's go to a movie or out to dinner or watch TV instead of working on the website." Which we did.

When we are out cruising, we tended to only work on the website (or any boat-related work for that matter) on rainy, too windy, or extremely gloomy days. We don't want to miss a nice day out on the water. As a result of these "time constraints", we only have content ready to publish to our website every few months or so.

By adding blogs, we will now have the ability (with more spontaneity and less effort) to fill the time gaps between website updates. Might this result in even less frequent photo logs? We're not sure yet. As you can see, sailwhisper is still a work-in-progress, even after seven years.

The message is, it takes time to maintain a website. Make sure you get as much enjoyment out of the resulting work as anyone you might be creating it for. A quick monthly email to a distribution list of friends and family (maybe with a few photos attached) is more-than-sufficient for many cruisers. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you are having fun while you're doing it!

Reflections on keeping a Website

Keeping a journal and taking lots of digital photos while out cruising is a great way to record our travels. Publishing and maintaining content on a website takes a fair bit of time and effort. Friends and family seem to appreciate the insight into our experiences. Receiving notes, feedback or questions from folks who stumble upon the site is fun and motivational for us. Plus, looking back over our adventures is fun for us. Re-reading logs from months or years ago allows us to reflect on all the stuff we've done, the beautiful places we've seen, and great people we've met.

However, keeping a website isn't for everyone. If you are a new cruiser and considering setting up your own website, you have several choices...

Building Your Own Website

• The first decision is whether to code HTML or use software products such as DreamWeaver or Front Page. If you already have some computer and HTML skills, building a website can be fairly easy. If you do not like to write HTML or do not want to learn HTML, buy some software to help you.
• If you want to learn HTML and digital photography editing skills while out cruising (for the first time), it may be difficult without a patient mentor, a decent "how to" book and a desire to learn. You will also need lots of time to sit, learn, and experiment. If persistent, you will be able to learn most of what is needed to keep a simple site up and running.
• Keep the site structure fairly simple. Find a site you like and use the code as a template to get started - assuming no code is intended for sharing.
• We recommend starting a site (and building a log template) while still at the dock with access to resources: the web, your internet hosting, books, and friends
• Find a reliable website hosting service. We use Cedant, but there are tons of options and bargains. With any bargain, be certain you know what you are getting - check out availability reviews, supported software and support.

Alternatives to building a Website

These alternate approaches to building a site require only minimal technical skill and enable anyone to chronicle their adventures for others to see and enjoy.

• One alternative to keeping your own site is to enlist someone maintain a website for you. Some people periodically send raw text and unedited pictures back to a friend/family webmaster via disk or email to create/update their website content for them.
• There also now several cruiser-centric sites that allow many boats to use their tools to keep an individual cruiser/boatname website updated. Google to find them.
• A quick monthly email to a distribution list of friends and family (maybe with a few photos attached) is more-than-sufficient for many cruisers.
• Last, but not least, you could just keep a simple blog with some photos. There are lots of options through services provided companies such as Wordpress, Blogspot and Feedburner. Even Winlink now offers Sailblogs.