12 Ideas for Gifts for Sailors on your Shopping List

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Wondering what to buy for the Sailor on your shopping List?   Here are a Ten Ideas for the sailor on your list…click any of them for more information, to order, or for some other ideas!

Remember, if the sailors on your list are full time cruisers, they only have so much room on their boat! Gifts should be practical. Best is to send cash so they can go on a safari, or take themselves out for a nice Christmas dinner. But if your sailor is close to home and you just don’t know what may be useful for them, here are some ideas!

If you don’t see something below, go to 

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 They have a lot of ideas and sales around this time of year too. Shipping is very quick and can even be sent overseas.

(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

1.

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Most sailors these days would like to video what they are doing and where they are. This was Patrick’s Christmas gift this year after he lost his first one. He loves it, and the Hero 5, even though not the newest is really the best one in his opinion!

2.

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A good book, with good ideas for every sailor! We keep this onboard and get new ideas from it all the time.

3.

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We have one of these onboard so every device on or off the boat can have accurate positioning. Sometimes we even take it hiking with us to record how far we have walked 😉

4.

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Great on a boat…even

better in an anchorage!

Not only is this great for use on the boat, at night, but it’s great too for taking night walks on those dark islands we anchor at. Fun and purpose all in one!

5.

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We don’t have one of these. But given the option, it’s always what we feel about sailing!

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We can not recommend this more highly. If your sailor will be anchoring a lot, this is a great stocking stuffer to make sure he keeps that anchor snubber in place!

7.

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Better hurry so they can engrave the boat name on it!

8.

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If your sailor is preparing to cross oceans, this book is something we not only have onboard but it has its own sewn cover for it to make sure nothing happens to it. One of the best books for a Sailor who makes a lot of Ocean passages.

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Your sailor can keep this aboard and if there is a medical emergency,he or she won’t have to do it all by memory! Lots of great ideas in this book for both preparing to go offshore, and actually having something happen when away from the doctor!

10.

If you and your sailor are planning your world cruise and want to be sure not to skip some of the best spots, this is your book!

12.Or a gift card to West Marine…by clicking here:

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 They have a lot of ideas and sales around this time of year…and the sailor won’t be able to decide to go out to dinner instead! They will appreciate this later on when they have something nice for their boat!

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The “Bad Elf” on Brick House

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You hear of boats every year, running up on ‘uncharted’ , or “mischarted” reefs. I always knew that charts could be wrong and always calculate conservatively for this. Did you know though,  that not only can reefs and rocks be mischarted, but your BOAT can also be mischarted!? Yes…I never knew that either. Depending upon the quality and condition at any one given time, your GPS may not be representing exactly where you are!

GPS in a good quality chartplotter like a Raymarine chartplotter for example are generally accurate within 3-20 feet of your actual position. Many others are too. But in handheld devices, notably the many Android devices that are popping up everywhere, are often 5 cent GPS chips made in China. They can be up to 50 feet off of where you actually are! With more and more people relying on handheld smartphones and tablets to navigate, this could spell Disaster! Many long term cruisers get “kap” files which they create from Google Earth. These are wonderful in that they show the exact location of rocks and reefs, so you can steer around them even when you can not visually see them. But what happens if your boat is not being shown properly in relation to those rocks and reefs?

And how did I discover this?

Well, I decided that I would be not so cheap this time, and buy a good quality tablet. I baught an IPad. I didn’t need “cellular” service in it since I have a wireless hotspot on board and only planned to use it on the boat. I got the iPad home, and installed with my applications, and suddenly I realized that I had no GPS signal in it! Don’t all new devices these days have GPS? Isn’t a GPS a GPS? Wifi versions of IPads have no GPS at all.

So now what do I do? No refund or exchange was possible.

When I started researching for solutions, this is when I discovered the bad news about GPS chips not having any quality standards or requirements. I also discovered many devices that work great near land and cell towers, are much less effective at sea, away from beacons and cell towers. I had no idea. I thought they either worked 100% or not at all.

I then found the  Bad Elf GPS. There is one for under $100 that can connect directly to my iPads Lightening connector, but I chose instead a Bluetooth version that not only my iPad can connect to for an extremely accurate and fast GPS, but all of my other devices can too.  And the boat icon representing my exact location, here in the cockpit, shows that I am in the cockpit of the boat in this slip…not at the bow…not standing on the dock. That’s how accurate it is.

I’m so glad that this little Bad Elf has taught me a good lesson!

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