About Us
Do you want something that doesn't exist? Go make it.
Many years ago, I was working on a military base in a highly restricted area and we had a tool break. I just knew we were going to lose hours, leaving base, heading to a store, and buying a new part, when an old, very experienced electrician said "wait a second.. I think we can make one". And he did. We did.
That was the moment I realized that if you want something that doesn't exist.. you can probably go out there and make it. So that is what we did here, and I hope someone reading this realizes they can too.
Our Story
In 2018, I left my corporate job to try and go fishing for a summer. I was working as a mechanical engineer (Virginia Tech '08) for a defense contractor and had spent 8 years on the road, living exclusively out of hotels all over the world. They accidentally sent me to the beach in Destin, Fl. I never left. I just wanted to go fishing for a bit. I figured I'd have to get a job in the fall. I didn't know what I was doing - I grew up in the snow and ice, skiing and playing hockey. I didn't know where to fish. But I had a laptop and told myself to figure it out.
I attacked the Gulf via the internet, and found all sorts of artificial reefs, wrecks, and put them into a spreadsheet. Converting it to a usable format was a bit of an issue, but eventually uploaded them into an old chart-plotter and got to work, checking them off. I thought there had to be an easier way. That next year, I won 11 divisions in a fishing tournament and Captain of the Year. Now, it's a successful charter business (www.30alighttackle.com). I never saw this coming. New boats, accumulating and transferring waypoints, changing brands of electronics. More file formats to figure out.
I spend a lot of time on my boat. I'm always tinkering with something or trying something new, and I love it. I started doing fishing seminars for a local marina to help explain some of the fishing techniques that I learned from trips during my old travel career, and especially the sonar settings and chart-plotter settings that I have learned to use here in the northern gulf.
I made the mistake - at the marine electronics seminar pictured below - to mention that there was a way to manage your waypoints on a computer. It involved exporting, converting, sd cards, importing, losing a lot of data. I woke up to emails from all over the country of people asking for help. I thought they were going to care more about chirp frequencies and ping rates than managing waypoints. Apparently it was a huge problem.
So I tried to make a way to do it.
Version 0.0.228 to Version 1.0.1 (16)
I'll be honest. I thought I was pretty good at this, but things grew very fast and moved a bit outside of my wheelhouse. Luckily, as I was complaining about my limitations, someone joking laughed at me and said 'Do you know what I do for a living?"
Enter Bo.
Bo Manry looked at me and said "I do software development" and smiled. His degree is in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Over the past two decades, he has started and sold multiple businesses. He was currently working on a million dollar company providing a software system for real estate investors (www.myreipro.com). He's worked with many companies and government agencies to develop computerized based systems and automation. He's a local, and a fisherman. He liked the idea.
So we made this. I can't thank him enough for jumping on this and trusting me to make it happen. He can be found at bomanry.com
The goal of this is to make your life easier. To solve a problem that we had.
We hope this helps. If there's something that could be done differently, please let us know. If something doesn't work right, or there is a feature request, we would love to chat to provide the best product we can. Because let's face it - boating and fishing can be a lot of work, so if something makes it easier - good, because it's also a hell of a lot of fun.