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October 02, 2008
Introducing Our First Sailing Partner: Google
During the past month I announced my grand plan for a five year sailing adventure around the world which will begin next year. My wife Karen and I have already purchased a boat called "Tahina", delivered it from the Bahamas, and are now working on a huge list of preparations. A big part of the plan is to share the experience with people through a "geo-documentary".
My vision is that we will use a combination of a blog, and extensive geo-spatially organized content to share where we go, provide information about our travel locations, and show the sights we see. You will be able to follow our paths on the sea, on land, and possibly even under water all from within Google Earth (and with Google Maps, the Google Earth plugin, and other tools - maybe Google Ocean?). Not only that, but I will be taking aerial photography of some of the destinations using a combination of kite aerial photography, remote controlled aircraft, and by flying regular planes. I figured the resulting high resolution aerial photography would make for some very interesting views in Google Earth of exotic or unusual locations around the world. Places where few high resolution aerial photos are available. My inspiration for this idea was the excellent work by Michael Fay in the MegaFlyover images already in Google Earth for National Geographic.
When I started envisioning the creation of all this content, I naturally was thinking it would be more useful if a larger audience could see the content. So, I approached Google and told them about my circumnavigation plans. The Google geo team has enthusiastically embraced the idea and we have an arrangement where they will be acquiring content from our trip for use in their products. Teaming with Google for our circumnavigation is the realization of a dream which started three years ago when I first started using Google Earth to document our sailing trip back in 2002-2003. It was during that first trip that my wife and I began our plans for the circumnavigation. But, leveraging Google Earth to share our experiences became an integral part of what I wanted to accomplish. We also have plans to help raise awareness about issues facing the world's ocean environment and marine life. All of this is more feasible thanks to the help we will be getting from Google.
Posted by FrankTaylor at October 2, 2008 03:30 PM
Comments
Posted by: smokeonit at October 2, 2008 05:44 PM
Fantastic news Frank - congratulations!
Posted by: MattyT at October 2, 2008 07:26 PM
unrelated to your post, but interesting article here
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081003.wlmapmakers03/BNStory/lifeMain/home
Posted by: alan at October 3, 2008 11:02 AM
@smokeonit: I haven't selected which plane yet. I'll be working with PictEarth.com on that in the coming months as we prepare for departure. I will also have a kite aerial photography setup.
Posted by: Frank Taylor at October 3, 2008 11:43 AM
Great news Frank! Congratulations to you and your wife!
Hope to get hires imagery of the Runit Island concrete dome on Enewetak Atoll some time ;-)
Posted by: Ernst M. Kofler at October 3, 2008 01:10 PM
what kite setup do you plan on??? have you had experience with it?
this sounds very interesting;-)
Posted by: smokeonit at October 3, 2008 05:26 PM
Congratulations! This is great news and quite an endeavor. I'm looking forward to following your journey and seeing the results.
Posted by: michael d at October 3, 2008 11:23 PM
@smokeonit: I'm getting a little help on kite aerial photography (KAP) from Scott Haefner who also happens to be the USGS guy who did the real-time earthquakes layer for GE.
Posted by: Frank Taylor at October 4, 2008 07:44 AM
Fantastic yes, my wife and I are living in La Desirade, FWI, if you ever think about a stop in Guadeloupe, here is our mail.
Desirade location: 16°19'17.19" N 61°02'44.14'' O
Our Blog is better with Google Chrome
@+
Gardner
Posted by: Walkin Gardner at October 4, 2008 07:58 AM
Frank,
Congrats on the upcoming adventure. We've been out for almost five years now and Google has been like a third crew member, Gmail, Picasa, Blogger and of course Google earth and google maps. We use Google earth (in Cache mode) all the time at sea especially in the places where charts are off by a lot (like Eastern Fiji 7/10 nM, Kirabati 2 nM and the Red Sea variable). It's also great in areas like Indonesia where the charts are ok but not detailed enough to find an anchorage.
We have a free helpful hints site www.creative-cruising.com that might help you with what works out here, everything from computer backups to sailboat fishing tips. It even has our detailed GPS track, blogs, journals and videos etc in Google Earth and Google maps. Let us know if you have any questions or if there anything we can do to help..
All the best, and you'll love it out here!!
Chris and KT
SV Billabong
Ventura Ca
We are now 28,000 nM and 20,000 photos away from home in Turkey, It doesn't sound like much in the world of 747's but divide that by 5 to calculate the hours spent at sea!!
Posted by: Chris Myles at October 4, 2008 12:14 PM
It's really coming together isn't it? And with resources from all over the Earth. I look forward to it.
Posted by: Hill at October 4, 2008 06:20 PM
Really great news Frank! It must be great to know you have the support from Google.
I wish you the best of luck.
Posted by: Jacob at October 5, 2008 08:42 AM
Sounds like a great plan Frank, look forward to reading about your preparations. When you've picked out your rough course, please feel free to let us know and we'll put it through our routing engine to build out a kml file for you. Would be a good test to see how well we've built out some of the smaller ports of the world. And let me know when you call into Brisbane on the way to the great barrier reef!
Posted by: Dan Russell at October 6, 2008 04:41 AM
Live satellite imagery now available from ITR tech. A 2-3 second delay of anywhere on the earth is avaliable directly to a desktop Google Earth. Visit www.jotoria.com or for a demonstration, visit www.youtube.com/itrtechfilms
Posted by: ITR Tech at October 13, 2008 08:44 AM
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awesome news!
when did you get one of those R/C planes to make aerials with it???