In recent years, French startups have flourished in the world of recreational boating. Their common denominator is to use digital technology to implement an idea which intends to provide a unique service to boaters.. How many will survive ? Hard to say, but they all have the merit of dusting off dad's boating by addressing the younger generation of water sports enthusiasts.. Community sharing of information, co-location, « bla-bla-boat », so many responses to new attitudes in the practice of pleasure boating.
Among them, one particularly appealed to me, Deviated.
A simple idea indeed : community sharing of information on “good” anchorages and online reservations for short-term stopovers in marinas, from a smartphone application (iOS, Android). Nothing exceptional, you could say. But wait until you see the packaging…
What makes the application attractive, on the user side, is the simplicity of its interface. It shows a reflection focused on immediate effectiveness : a card, differentiated pins (fairground anchorages, organized on dead bodies, marinas), simple textual descriptions illustrated by a carousel of photographic views and neat informative icons.
Ports
For marinas, the available port services are added, quality labels, if applicable, locking times, views summarizing the tourist attractions of the place, and of course a reservation button.
The daily rate for the boat registered in your profile is displayed on the first page. The “Send a request” button leads to the selection of a date within the next three days and for a maximum duration of three nights. These are therefore requests for short-term stopovers, to ensure a place is available upon arrival, during a summer trip.
Organized or fairground anchorages
Community sharing is not new in boating. Implemented by Navionics in its “Boating” application (¹), the world leader remains the American network ActiveCaptain which lists tens of thousands of ports and anchorages around the world, a database permanently fed by browsers, but practically unknown in France because only written in English. Which leaves the field open to Navily.
Once again, creating a spot is extremely simple. We place a pin on the map zoomed to the maximum, a window allows you to enter the anchorage description icons, a possible comment. You can report an error for a location already present. When we cross for the first time along an unknown coast, it is welcome to be able to rely on the experience of previous navigators, while remaining cautious about the quality of the information entered (nature of funds, protection from prevailing winds, disembarkation facilities, etc,).
You can scroll through the satellite views of the anchorages to discover the surrounding places and choose the next steps. Everything is simple, convivial, fast. Regarding the interface, we can only regret not having the choice of displaying only one type of place at a time (harbours, organized or fairground anchorages), and the absence of a list of ports.
What I think about it
Lots of good, as you might have guessed. But the application is young. Launched in 2015 in its version 2, if it claims to date almost 10.000 users and 2.500 shared mooring places, it still only lists around twenty partner ports having subscribed to the reservation service from the Navily Pro application. The creators therefore still have a lot of canvassing work to do., because this is Navily’s major asset. Especially since few marinas have already implemented online reservations. Most of Corsica's ports are equipped with “Magelan eResa” from the publisher Octaedra., but that did not prevent the port of Bonifacio from using Navily in parallel.
Atlantic side, there is everything to do, because neither the ports of the Compagnie du Morbihan (CPM), nor the ports of Brittany (APPB), even less the scattered ports of the Channel and Aquitaine, do not offer an online stopover reservation service. I was pleasantly surprised to see the port of Nantes in Navily (more precisely the Belem pontoon) managed by the CCI, and my home port of St Vaast-La-Hougue. I remain convinced that the success of this application will depend on the concept of stopover security., more than through community sharing, as useful as it is in the context of boating. In any case I say bravo to the creators, and I wish them good luck !
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(¹) Navionics Mobile and Community Sharing
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Yeah, I ask to see … Objectively Active Captain has been around for a long time, All you have to do is fill it out in French, it works too, I did it, and then abroad English ? Have you already tried to call the freighter that is going to hit you in French? ? ZeroSix captain, it works like this. Another advantage of Active Captain is that it interfaces with nav apps such as SEAIq for example., like AyeTides, so no need to have 150 000 references, you no longer know that she is the one.
As for booking in advance … Not so long ago, ports were required to hold overnight berths for visitors., a certain name of places, I grant it to you, but the notion of shelter is still … A little ? … Important ?
PS : and in addition you give your phone number, yes you …
So ask Mark how many active users he has in France. Navily is primarily aimed at French navigators.
The allocation of places for a short stopover is today governed by the “no reservation” rule. – first come = first served ». It is obviously very unpleasant to have to rush so as not to arrive too late to get a correct place.. It is also a rule which guarantees a certain freedom of pleasure..
A reservation system will be harmful in the long run, boaters could be forced to go through tour operators who will have purchased places in bulk well in advance.
Online reservation sites such as “Booking” take a significant portion of the hotel industry’s turnover. , let's try to ensure that they don't do the same on pleasure nights.
This is totally impossible in a system like Navily (or even Magelan eResa). The navigator must create an account with the characteristics of his own boat, and enter your bank details as a guarantee of your reservations. Your concern seems unfounded to me, very fortunately.
I agree, this is a good start. Not everyone however has on line access while on the water, especially when you are going for foreign countries. As an example a weekend across the English channel. So, an off line version that would cache data for a specific area with text and light photos would be welcome.
I think this is also what makes ActiveCaptain a so appealing.
Interesting as an application. This will perhaps give, and hope, ideas to ActiveCaptain, because here in North America they are the kings and masters. The amount of information on ActiveCaptain is impressive, but the interface is not very advanced, which considerably lengthens the time needed to obtain information. Congratulations to the French cousins!