As you go north this Spring, or cruise around your home waters, consider leaving a comment on Waterway Guide about a shoaling area, an anchorage, or marina. Look at the step-by-step guide in the screenshots below where it can all be done within Aqua Map if you’re using that mobile app, or within Waterway Guide’s online Explorer at waterwayguide.com.
It’s simple and helps all of us keep up to date. Best of all, the posts don’t disappear as they do on a site using Facebook where they age and become scattered among all the other posts. They are always available by location in Aqua Map and on the Waterway Guide Explorer portal.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone left a comment as they passed through a shoaling area - to the benefit of those yet to experience the pleasure of a shoal area? After all, there are now over 16,000 of us on the ICW Cruising Guide Facebook page alone and another 13,000 followers on the Waterway Guide site – as well as hundreds of thousands visiting Waterwayguide.com. That’s a lot of info available if more members will contribute. The only thing you need to do in advance is to get a free Waterway Guide account at waterwayguide.com/
Use the link above or tap the sign-in button at the top right of the homepage to sign in or to get a free account if you don’t already have one. Once you have your ID and Password from Waterway Guide, then you can sign into Waterway Guide in Aqua Map when you want to comment – but you only need to sign in once.
Aqua Map (or the Waterway Guide webpage) remembers all this and from now on, you just follow the steps in the screenshots below to comment. All the stuff about your name, draft, boat size, and whether your boat is power or sail is automatically filled in. You can show your boat name, too, if you desire (it’s optional). Your email address is not shown in your review, it’s there in case the editors at Waterway Guide want to ask you a question about the details of what you said.
From here on out, you just follow the screenshots below and comment on each hazard, marina, or anchorage and hit “Submit”. It will be reviewed by a Waterway Guide editor for the same reasons the ICW Cruising Guide Facebook page is for members only - to prevent spam or very obvious errors (no, UFOs did not cause your grounding…)
Follow along:
A Waterway Guide editor may contact a reviewer for more info on his or her post for more details - to increase the usefulness to all boaters. The screenshots are from Aqua Map which is the only app that offers Waterway Guide reviews and comments.
In the example, we are going to comment on the Alert shown in the screenshot. We already have an account and previously signed into Waterway Guide within Aqua Map.
Tap on the “I” next, to bring up a text box with more details.
If you haven’t already signed in to Waterway Guide using Aqua Map, you do it here at the upper right. In the example, Robert is already signed in.
Again, once signed in, you stay signed in. You don’t have to sign in every time you leave a review.
Robert was already signed in so all the details are automatically entered. All he has to do is write the review in the text box and then tap on “Submit”
A Waterway Guide editor will then review the input, perhaps ask a question for clarification (or not), and publish the review to everyone’s benefit.
It’s that easy.
- 4,000 Marinas
- Thousands of anchorages
- Updated Charts
- Mile-by-Mile Navigation
- Highlighted Alerts & Cautions
- Full-Color Aerial Photographs
The Waterway Guide App Makes it easy to leave reviews, use our explorer, and view waterway guide materials all on the go!
