August/September, 2011

My dear Tidelog friends, this is goodbye.

It's been 31 years since we published the first Tidelog, for San Francisco Bay, 1981. What a voyage!

These first Tidelogs actually preceded personal computers and the laser printer, and were literally hand-drawn with drafting tools. The advent of the PC, capable programming languages, and finely detailed laser output allowed us to grow from one edition to nine, and from a few hundred copies to 24,000 per year.

Adobe Systems, you'll always have a place in our heart. PostScript forever!

We're proud to have been written up in the San Francisco Examiner, Baltimore Sun, Scientific American, several outdoors publications and websites, and kindly invited to speak to various salty groups on occasion. We made a lot of friends, most of whom I have never met but many of whose voices I came to recognize "on sight".

We stayed small and focused, worked hard, and made a nice living doing something that people liked. A great feeling! We enjoyed constant strokes from you who would not only write or phone to order Tidelogs, but in the process would tell us how much you loved it. My heartfelt thanks to all you fine folks.

Now I'm 66, and there's change. Tidelog has been truly a labor of love. The love remains, but the labor now more difficult since the untimely departure last April of my "first mate", who was integral to most phases of Tidelog's operations. A new level of effort is required to take Tidelog further, while my own interests range afield.

Will there be a 2012 Tidelog? Won't you sell the business to someone who will continue it?
I certainly hope so! Demand is good. We sold 20,000 copies of the 2011 editions, and there are many untouched opportunities for growth, both geographical and technological.

So yes, Tidelog is for sale, but there are barriers that a buyer must consider:

1) money. Tidelog is a great little business, and can justify a substantial purchase price.

2) computer programming. This is at the core of Tidelog, and any buyer will need to have some facility in this increasingly uncommon skill. The programs which check, input, and manipulate the raw data, draw the Tidelog, keep track of all of our customers, and handle shipping and invoicing are already written and largely bug-free, but run on obsolete platforms and need to be modernized, as does our internet presence, www.tidelog.com.

3) hard work. There's a nice long offseason, but the busy season can be intense!

Know someone (person, group, business) who could be the next Tidelog people?
Please email greatwhiteowl@gmail.com ..the best way to contact us now.

What if I have future issues coming on my subscription?
In the absence of a sale, we'll begin writing refund checks to cover these obligations. There will be nearly 2,000 checks to write, so please be patient. It will take us a while to get them all out, but we hope to complete as much of the process as possible by the end of the year.

Thank you, all you beautiful people! for your encouragement and invitations, your criticisms and suggestions, for all those great notes and pictures, and for your interest in Tidelog!

Mark Alan Born

Pacific Publishers
P O Box 480
Bolinas CA 94924