Chatty Parrot, a website for sailors

A new website for sailors, Chatty Parrot, was officially launched at the London Boat Show on the Little Ship Club stand.  Little Ship Club member Celia Mason set up the site after two years of cruising made her want to find a low cost, private way of keeping in touch and swapping information with other yachties.

First things first: Chatty Parrot is free.

Chatty Parrot helps you stay in touch with friends at home and those you’ve made in the course of your travels, and increases your chances of meeting up with new friends again. It also acts as an on-line pilot book, as you can leave information on the map about missing buoys, lively bars, diesel prices, recommendations for places to get work done … or anything else of interest.

Chatty Parrot will show you on a map where all your friends are, and send alerts if they are nearby. So if the couple you met in Honfleur turn up in your marina, or the friends you made in Menorca decide, like you, to visit Rome, Chatty Parrot will let you know. You could be only half a mile apart, but without knowing you were both in the same place at the same time, you might easily miss each other.

You can also host your blog on Chatty Parrot, with photos and a map of your voyage, and it is an easy way of seeing all your friends’ blogs from one central point. The site lets you search in blogs (subject to the author’s privacy choices), to get more detailed information about places you are planning to visit. Chatty Parrot also gives members the ability to send instant messages to their friends.

Because Chatty Parrot was developed by a cruising yachtie, it has a low-graphics option so it can be used by people with slow, expensive or weak connections to the internet.

And because Chatty Parrot was developed by someone in their fifties (!), it pays a lot of attention to people’s privacy and giving them control over the information they post. Members can choose to whom they want to make their information available, and can have different settings for the visibility of their location, their blog and for information snippets they leave. Members are reminded which categories they have chosen to share their information with each time they log on to the site, and all new members are given, by default, the most private settings. Equally, if a member invites someone else to become a friend, Chatty Parrot won’t hassle that person with automatic reminders.

Chatty Parrot will never abuse its members’ trust by selling their email addresses or sending junk emails.


Celia Mason, Chatty Parrot’s founder, says “We’ve made some wonderful friends on our voyage; people with whom we had a lot of fun, and really wanted to spend more time with. Too often, though, we have missed seeing them, even though we had been on the same island at the same time.

“Two years – and 12,000 nautical miles – of travelling and meeting people showed me how those who are on the move – for whatever reason – are keen to keep in touch with all the like-minded people they meet, but lack an easy way to do so. Chatty Parrot gives people that way to stay in touch with their friends, and to have many more happy meetings.”

 


Contact: Celia Mason, +44 (0)777 156 0958, celia@chattyparrot.net


It all started with a Little Ship Club yachtmaster theory course … then in 2008 Celia Mason, with her husband Anthony, and with fellow LSC member Rachel Hedley as crew, set off across the Atlantic in their 43 foot yacht Tomia. Two years of voyaging and meeting other sailors and travellers led to the idea of a website specifically aimed at people who are on the move, and their friends at home.