When you’re out sailing the world, one of the most common questions from friends and family back home is, “How can we follow your journey?
People are often curious to know where you are, see the places you’re exploring, and want to make sure you’re safe out there. One way to do that is with noforeignland. By tracking and sharing your boat’s journey on the map, your loved ones can get everything they need to follow your voyage visually, including stories, photos and locations.
If you’re new to using noforeignland, getting your boat’s position recorded on the map is the crucial first step towards sharing your journey with friends and family. It’s easy to manually update your boat position or record and accurate GPS track using the noforeignland app. We also integrate with all major tracking services as well.
Using the Share button to create a link to your boat
To share your boat’s journey, all you need to do is send people a link to your boat profile on noforeignland.
- Open your boat profile on the noforeignland app or website
- Tap the Share button under your banner photo
- Copy the sharing link
- Share the link with anyone who wants to track your sailing adventure
Whenever someone clicks on that link, they’ll be taken straight to your boat’s noforeignland page displaying your current position on the map.
Sending people straight to your journey
If you prefer, you can also link people directly to your boat journey instead of your boat profile; all you need to do is add /journey to the end of your boat’s sharing link.
Viewers are greeted with a map displaying your track line, making it easier for those who aren’t familiar with the noforeignland platform to go straight to what they’re really interested in.
Using the follow button to get update notifications
Tell your friends to install the noforeignland app and to follow your boat. Following is easy. All they need to do is:
- Go to your boat page
- Click the Follow button (with the small heart on it)
Once they’re following you, they’ll get automatic notifications when you move or post a story, making it easier for them to keep up-to-date with your travels.
Add stories and chapters
A route tracking line on a map is definitely cool, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The noforeignland platform allows you to add rich content and chapters to your timeline, which brings your journey to life in a way that coordinates simply can’t.
Adding Chapters to your journey
If you’ve been sailing a few years or tend to cruise the same areas repeatedly, journey lines can start to cross over one another making it difficult for people to decipher your actual route.
To solve this, noforeignland has a feature called Chapters. By default, the system creates a new chapter for each year you’ve been sailing, however, you can jump into the settings and define your own. For instance, you could break your trip down by ocean crossing, by season, or by a specific island chain you explored.
Adding Stories to the map
By right clicking on your boat’s journey line on the website, or by pressing and holding the red line in the app, you can select “Add story.”
Stories let you document your travels in a multimedia format, with text posts, photos and links to YouTube videos or your personal blog. It gives people back home a real window into your daily life on the water, and creates a way for you to look back on your journey and reminisce.
When you add these stories, little journey icons pop up on your track line to indicate what type of content is there; whether it’s images, video, or text. Previews of these stories show up in a scrolling area at the bottom of the screen, and people can like and comment on your them.
Sharing your adventure with family and friends using noforeignland
On top of journey tracking, stories and chapters, you can also customise your boat page URL to make it easier to share, or embed your journey into a blog.
All of these tools come together to create a streamlined way to keep people back home updated on your adventures, reassuring them you’re safe and involving them in the journey.
Share what your family and friends back home love to see of your adventure, and whether you’ve tried using noforeignland to do it!
By Telicia Campain
Telicia is the editor of noforeignland Magazine and one of the creators behind Travel Sketch. She sails the world full-time aboard a 45ft catamaran, accompanied by her crew and faithful Aussie Shepherd, Rose. Having explored the Mediterranean and Caribbean, SV Liger is currently charting a course towards the Pacific islands and Southeast Asia.
