Useful item from Yachting Life

[cpedw]

http://www.yachtinglife.co.uk/content.p ... anchorages Courtesy of Dyflin in TOP.

Derek

[Telo]

I'm sure it's a perfectly reasonable guide to pontoons and visitor moorings (looks like a more commercial update of the old SailScotland guide).

But, given the "authoritative" nature of the very respectable organisations that have sponsored it, it must have come as a great surprise for the citizens of Fort William to discover that they are actually resident in Argyll, and that Arisaig is in Morvern, or that Skye is an Argyll island. This is pathetic imho.

I do not think that I'm splitting hairs or being pedantic; this is a basic issue of accuracy. Surely the people behind such a project should at least have a grasp of the geography of their own country?

[Silkie]

Seems also to have compromised it's accuracy by limiting the number of words for each section.

Lochaline has two licensed premises, a hotel
serving bar meals, and The White House
described as "outstandingly good" by the
Good Food Guide.

There are three licensed premises not counting the shop but the Whitehouse only has a table licence AFAIK. No mention at all of the social club which is surely the easiest if you just fancy a couple of pints.

I've saved it anyway.

[Nick]

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I had a look but didn't read the whole way through it after finding it full of advertising. As a PDF to read on screen it is useless in any event, and needs printing - and I for one am not prepared to print anything that is more than 50% advertising.

If it is the old Sail Scotland guide then I am not surprised it is inaccurate. What a useless organisation that is . . . the Welcome Ashore section on the website still says

Please note that we are currently updating the web site entries for this section

- as it has for six years now! As wastes of bandwidth go the SailScotland.co.uk site must rank pretty high.

The gentleman who ran Sail Scotland at that time (and may still do for all I know) got in touch with me when I first started the Scottish Moorings page six years ago to try to get me to desist as I was treading on his patch. He told me I would be leaving myself open to legal action if someone was on a mooring that broke etc. I told him I didn't care, and have not heard of him since. I got the impression he was doing all right personally out of the organisation, which I believe has in the past received substantial public funding.

I am sure that similarly the main thrust behind the production of this guide has been to line someone's pockets - and a remarkably clever scheme it is too when you consider that the production and distribution of a PDF file costs almost nothing.

Of course, if I had thought of it first and managed to get all those big name advertisers to sign up then it would have been a brilliant idea and you would just have been a bunch of nitpicking whingers . . .

[Telo]

which I believe has in the past received substantial public funding.

Can't comment on that, but looking at the sponsorship and some of the advertising content, I'd say that there was more than a small chance that public money has been involved in this production.

Of course, if I had thought of it first and managed to get all those big name advertisers to sign up then it would have been a brilliant idea and you would just have been a bunch of nitpicking whingers . . .

[aquaplane]

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Of course, if I had thought of it first and managed to get all those big name advertisers to sign up then it would have been a brilliant idea and you would just have been a bunch of nitpicking whingers . . .

But if the info was the same as on your Scotish moorings pages, there wouldn't be the comments about the info being out of date/wrong, and you may be able to stump up the cash for kennels this summer.

[Telo]

It seems that the Crown Estate contributed £10,000 from their Marine Communities Fund. This would not be unreasonable in my view if it provided visiting sailors with good quality info. As pointed out elsewhere, there is not just a problem with the geographic nomenclature, but also with the details, eg the diagrammatic chart for the Ballachulish facilities is out by about two miles.

Presumably its web based format makes it easier to edit, though I expect it's too late for the print run.

[Nick]

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Presumably its web based format makes it easier to edit

It's a PDF file, which can easily be knocked up from a Word document. Even you could produce this, Shard.

I could have produced this in a month for 5K including all the travel and research and would have thought all my Christmasses had come at once.

It's a rip-off, and an inaccurate one at that. How much do you think the perpetrators raised altogether? As I commented before, it is half advertising.