Mad Mariner is glad to welcome Linebagz as our latest advertiser.

Linebagz is a Florida company that makes UV protective flat plastic tubing that is used to protect your boat when it is hauled, painted, serviced or shipped.

The product is sold in boxed rolls, and is used to cover lift straps, masts, outriggers, hoses, power cords and anything else that needs sprotection. You simply cut the length you need and attach it with tape or cable ties. The company offers sizes from 3- to 19-inches wide in stock and custom sizes to 54 inches. It even comes in colors.

Advertising on Panbo, the largest marine electronics blog on the Internet, is now available through Mad Mariner's sales team — and at no additional cost.

Mad Mariner announced a deal to manage advertising sales and placement on Panbo earlier this year, creating a combined marketplace that averages roughly 150,000 unique visitors each month. Today, that deal was implemented when ads sold by Mad Mariner appeared on Panbo for the very first time.

To start the partnership off right, Mad Mariner is offering advertisers placement on Panbo as part of our existing ad packages, with no increase in rates. Whether you are interested in Mad Mariner or Panbo, your company can now run on both sites for the same price.

You learn a few things when you own a boat, small lessons that present themselves — often the hard way — as you adapt to life over water. And it is this experience that forms the basis of Mad Mariner's latest contest.

Just write a few paragraphs answering the question: What's the single best tip you could give a new boater? Our editors will collect and read these tips until the deadline at midnight on March 13, and we'll announce the winners and publish some of the best March 17. Other entries will be published in our tips column in the weeks ahead. 

Of course, we never ask you to work for free. First prize is a West Marine dinghy, worth about $200; second prize is an Icom M34 handheld floating VHF, worth about $150; and third prize is a Norcross DF 2200PX handheld depthfinder, valued at about $90. Everybody who enters gets a free subscription to Mad Mariner.

Navimatics, which makes a full-featured navigation application for Apple's iPhone, is the latest advertiser to join Mad Mariner.

The Navimatics Charts & Tides application relies on NOAA vector charts, which are downloaded with the application and stored on the phone. Using the iPhone's touchscreen, boaters can pan a zoom around their charts, get tidal predictions, set waypoints, measure distance and perform other navigational functions.

Most boaters like a freebie — and we can get you one. Share Mad Mariner with three boating friends who register for a free 30-day trial and we'll send youa free stainless steel deck key.

Deck keys make it easy to open your water and fuel tanks, and have a habit of falling overboard. You can never have too many and they cost about $10 each at marine stores. So why not pick up a spare for no money down?

Mad Mariner has partnered with the Marine Marketers of America to provide design and development work for the organization's website on a pro bono basis. 

MMA is a professional development organization for marketing and communications professionals in the recreational marine industry. The association, established in 2007, hands out awards for top advertising campaigns and regularly sponsors expert panels at the Miami and Fort Lauderdale boat shows.

Mad Mariner is happy to welcome Fugawi, the maker of well-respected navigation software, as it's latest advertiser.

Fugawi Marine ENC, the company's primary marine product, is going mobile. By teaming with iNavX and MacENC, Fugawi has created a system that will allow boaters to easily move waypoints and other data between a computer — PC or Mac — and Apple's iPhone. X-Traverse, a web-based service, facilitates the transfer without cables.

Schmap Guides, which produces online travel guides to more than 200 destinations, has selected a Mad Mariner photo to represent the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show in its Fort Lauderdale Guide.

The photo was shot at last year's show and depicts a pretty new red-hulled Luhrs 37 Open (with triples, not the pod drives). We used it in a post about the new boat. Schmap used it to represent the show, which brings tens of thousands of people to Fort Lauderdale every October.

Glen Justice, the editor of Mad Mariner, was appointed to the board of Boating Writers International this week.

Justice was appointed to fill a vacancy after gaining the third-highest vote total in elections held in January to fill two open seats. He will chair the organization's New Media Committee.

Boating Writers International is a non-profit professional organization for reporters, editors, photographers, broadcasters and others in the communications profession surrounding the boating industry.

Mad Mariner's 10-part Going Mobile series, which explored how to make the best use of mobile phone technology while onboard, won an award from Boating Writers International this week.