ActiveCaptain.com is an interactive online cruising guide written by boaters for boaters. Founder Jeffrey Siegel reveals his reasons for founding it and his expert outlook on the boating scene.

We started ActiveCaptain with a simple three word concept in mind, “Capture the conversation.” As long distance cruisers ourselves, we realized that the most valuable information exchanged between boaters was during informal conversations at docks and anchorages. This is the information that is most relevant and true. While a guidebook might specify whether a marina has showers or other facilities, boaters can tell you whether those showers are clean. It’s first-hand accounts like that as well as information about navigational hazards and anchorage details that can make the difference between a happy cruise and a cruising nightmare.

Since these conversations are fleeting and left to chance, we decided to find a way to share boaters’ experiences and knowledge to benefit the whole boating community. We have spent several years developing, enhancing, and nurturing a system that allows boaters to exchange useful information.

As boaters, we purchase expensive guidebooks for the supposedly useful information they provide. If these books are supposed to be written by experts who are familiar with a specific area, why do they so often provide false or inaccurate information?

This got us thinking. What makes an author an expert on a particular area? It’s usually someone who has experience and can write well. But does that expert have experience with my type of boat? Or the specific time of year that I’ll be coming through? More often than not, the answer is no.

The true expertise in boating lies in the community of active boaters who are actually out there on the water in different types of boats, in different weather conditions, with different needs. Their feedback is invaluable. We’ve received criticisms on ActiveCaptain that some marinas or anchorages are given high ratings by some people and low ratings by others. But that’s the point. We want to expose the good and bad across all levels of experience.

St Augustine Municipal Marina in Florida is a great example. It’s a fantastic mooring field and marina – one of the highest rated in ActiveCaptain but it has some two-star reviews mixed in with five-star. How is that possible?

It turns out that the municipal marina is very close to an ocean inlet where a large amount of water gets trapped around a bridge by the marina. This results in strong currents at various times during the day. If you’re not aware of this, you can pull into the marina at the wrong time and get slammed into the dock, which will prompt you to write a two-star review (afterwards someone else will ask why you didn’t read the warnings in ActiveCaptain). That two-star review can help the next wave of boaters who will wait that extra hour for the currents to pass before entering the marina.

Since then we’ve also launched CaptainRated.com, a sister site to ActiveCaptain, which shares information and reviews of different marine-related products and services. It’s starting out slowly with just brokers, surveyors, and transporters but we plan to expand it to cover many types of services and products. So when you’re cruising away from home, you’ll be able to get info on canvas repairers in the area along with the latest reviews from real boaters about the radars they’re using.

The Internet is an incredible communications tool that allows us to freely share valuable information. It has caused a dramatic shift it what makes an expert. The real boating experts are each and every one of us because we’re the ones that take to the water and return with a story to tell.

To register with ActiveCaptain, visit www.activecaptain.com