Hi...

"padeen" wrote in message
...
Hey Skip, thanks for the rundown. I'm facing the same routine this coming
spring, though with some different parameters. But I thought if you'd be
so
kind to post your database; not the info, just the headers, I could see
how
you organized your data. 200 boats!

I can't really post it, because it's in a format the newsgroup wouldn't
accept, unless you'd like it in a tab-delimited file you could import to a
spreadsheet. Of course, that would look pretty much like gobbledygook until
it was imported :{))

However, what I did to organize is made several columns, and three rows
(plus a blank row separator) per boat. The columns were map (how to find it
on the map, wihch I put on the first line of each selection - and on the
third line, I put the boat number in the search, which came after I'd laid
it out in the geography order), contact (the way to reach the seller, which
was always an email except in very infrequent FSBOs), the market (major
geographical location such as MIA or ANN as in Miami and Annapolis - which
helped me in the layout of each trip), the YachtWorld listing number (so
that any broker I'd sent the appropriate portion of the spreadsheet could
easily find it), the boat type (Island Packet 38 - IP38, e.g.) the price in
decimal boatbux (95.9, e.g.) and D/L (loosely called sailing ratio, the
Displacement to Waterline number which we'd want to fall in the mid 2-300
range). All that went on the first line. If there were other important
things you'd want to know in what I'd call a gross description, you could
add them, of course. I organized each cell to take the minimum necessary
space in order to get as many qualifiers as possible. I also printed in
landscape, for the same reason.

The second line started in the second column (and really just used the
second cell, but the text ran on over to however long it took). The first
cell was left blank in order to leave the map and search (our number from 1
to, currently, 175 boats seen in the US, with the remainder, after knocking
off the ones we found unworkable, and the ones we've dumped as too big, now
that we've gotten at least some candidates below 40', to be filled in when I
set up the next trip) open. Back to the second line, it was a shorthand
(DMD = dinghy, motor and davits, for example) quickie list of the things we
found important about this boat, since I carried only the front page of the
YachtWorld listing with me and those usually didn't have any other than a
brief puff piece about the boat, but did have the listing number and the
broker phone number on them, so that I could call if I needed (as I surely
did in this case, you'll recall!).

The third line likewise was actually the second cell; it had the URL for the
main page of that boat. I've found that invaluable to quickly revisit a page
for a boat when I'm trying to recall what was up about it.

In doing my search, I organized using Yachtworld's advanced search, and
specified the area I wanted to see, and the size and cost limitations I
wanted. Then, working down from largest to smallest, I entered the info
from each one I found that I thought I'd want to see into my database.
Since the process took much longer than just a week, I also signed up for
the update service (they send you a list of new listings each week) so that
I didn't have to regenerate the search each time, and so that I didn't have
to try to remember if I'd actually seen a particular boat in the listings or
not (after the first few hundred, it gets difficult!). I also developed
another little trick, taking advantage of my history/memory in the browser.
Since my search ran to 12 pages of 100 each, in order to not have to find my
place each time I quit, I took the current URL of the advanced search page
from the browser URL line, copied it, and pasted it into a new window, and
opened it. That made the history see that as a manual entry, and I just
went to the most recent YW URL in the history when I started up again.
Then, once I'd actually finished, I went through my updates (from the YW
service) and inserted the new ones in the database.

Because I did so many of these, I got adept at doing them in text form, but
until you've done it a while, likely you'd find it easier to do in the
spreadsheet format...

So, in the end, I have a database of boats we're considering ranked in size
from largest to smallest. I've also identified markets, in order to sort
for best travel organization. Since I'm not particularly adept in
spreadsheet formatting, I don't know how to sort my entries (being 4 lines,
including a blank separator between entries) in Excel, so I did my sorting
in Word (the file was far too large for notepad, where I originally started
the construction!). I still kept the largest first, but went to each market
in turn (having first laid out the route I wanted to take) by doing a search
for the map key (ANN=1, NVA=2, etc.) and cut-and-pasting them so that they
would be easily recognizable in the end. Then I re-import *that* file into
a new database which is organized, then, by market, in the order I'm going
to see them. The final step is to go back into the map column and number
each of the entries in sequence (first boat seen = 1, last, in this most
recent trip = 175)

That step makes it easier for me to go back later and retrieve any hard copy
file (I keep them in a notebook as I go, keeping them in numerical order)
when I'm doing a review, or trying to remember why it was that I rejected a
boat.

That's a very long answer to what might have been a very short question.
I'm happy to send the raw or Excel - entered database if it's of any
interest, but unless you're one with many of the same parameters as we, the
individual boats wouldn't likely be interesting to you.

L8R

Skip (and Lydia)