Introduction  

  Google Earth's remarkable imagery offers an overhead view of almost any anchorage in the world in quite amazing detail.
Here are just a few examples showing the tracks of the anchoring vessels :-

El Qeisum in the Red Sea .....s/y Bluesipp

Morsby Island, Chagos ...........s/y Taniwani

Tuamotus ...................s/y Vagabond Heart taking a careful look before entering Makemo atoll


This site provides what I hope is a really helpful passage planning tool  ......
Tracks actually laid down by fellow sailors displayed on Google Earth.
And those same tracks also in .ptf and .gpx formats.
You can use the site just for downloading the .ptf or .gpx files for your navigation program without installing Google Earth on your computer. But you miss half the fun and many of the advantages.  Google Earth is available for free download  here  

All tracks are available as  .kmz  files for Google Earth and as .ptf  for MaxSea  and as .gpx  for OpenCPN and others.  

(You can view a track on Google Earth by downloading its KMZ file and opening it with Google Earth.
You can view the track on a marine chart if you use MaxSea - download the PTF file and open in MaxSea.
If you use a system accepting GPX track files, for example Open CPN, you can use that to display the track on a marine chart.)

Downloaded PTF and GPX files can be viewed later on your nav system without internet connection. In general you need the internet to view KMZ files.

Some help on how to download files is given in the "Downloading" link above the OCC logo top left of this screen.

                             

 Here is a track from s/y Vagabond Heart as seen on the chart she used to enter Anchorage Island in Suvarov (Suwarrow)   This chart and track are displayed here on a computer running Open CPN.

And here is the same track on Google Earth :-

Google Earth also provides photographs from within the anchorages giving an excellent idea of what to expect - often quite different from what you might assume from the chart. These can be accessed from the small icons shown on the image. (But only when you are viewing it in GE, not from this screen shot)
Lat and Long can also be read off for any point on the GE display.

Two other things are rather striking .... Vagabond Heart picked out her anchorage quite beautifully, and the marine surveyors did a remarkably accurate piece of charting!

This library is growing all the time with tracks donated by fellow cruisers, and at present holds over 200 tracks containing more than 1,750 anchorages as well as many many reef passages, harbours and marinas.

The tracks  have been freely given and are freely available for you to download. But  of course you do so entirely at your own risk.

The tracks are for interest and planning only and they should not be used for navigation.

I shall be very happy if you share these tracks - in an unmodified form -  with other cruisers but never for commercial purposes. (Please see the Collective Commons License at the foot of this page)

In the right hand side bar (towards the top of this window) is a brief explanation of downloading a track (Malé), this is always available as an aide-mémoire wherever you are in the Library itself.

On the next post below is a rather fuller description of how I got the above images of Vagabond Heart's track from the Library.......
  

To avoid this post dropping off the bottom I have given it a pseudo publishing date