Mad Mariner's Editors are proud to support the Life Jacket Loaner Program for Kids, sponsored by the BoatU.S. Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water.

The program, which is operating in 350 locations from California to Vermont, makes children-sized life jackets available to boaters who are not prepared for visiting children or whose kids have outgrown their own. We could not imagine a more worthy cause than making boating safer for children. And so we donated $1,000.

Mad Mariner's new Weatherman on Deck feature allows you to chat directly with a meteorologist from the National Weather Service on our forums page, getting quick and thorough answers to questions about weather systems, charts and where to turn for more information.

Mad Mariner's editors have finally made a long-needed overhaul to the site's Forum Page. It wasn't a total facelift, but we added some new categories and organized things in a way that should make it easier to communicate.

Back in December, we mentioned that Mad Mariner was launching a page on Facebook, the popular social media site. Well, that very same page has since acquired more than 250 fans – and the number is growing.

Mad Mariner's booth in Miami was rarely empty, as new readers came by the hundreds.

Mad Mariner's Hard Facts on Software series, the definitive word on navigation software and electronic charting, has come to a close.

Ben Ellison, author of the marine electronics blog Panbo, which runs on Mad Mariner, won a writing award from Boating Writers International at the Miamia International Boat Show Friday.

Mad Mariner won a North American Marine Association Web Award today in the category of Outstanding Contribution to the Online Marine Industry.

Can't make it to Miami this week for the big boat shows? Mad Mariner will provide live coverage of the entire spectacle, updated several times a day.

More than 100 of you were kind enough to take Mad Mariner’s first-ever Reader Survey last week, a 13-question quiz geared to provide some basic information about our online community, such as Who are we? and What do we want?

We first need to thank those of you who took the survey. It was so successful that we probably will make this a regular feature. The answers help us calibrate the site to your interests, and we’ll produce a much better product if we do this a few times each year.

Of course, it is only fair – and fun – if we share some of the results afterward.