From the harbour office

Welcome to the logbook

Where the notes that won't fit into an app get written. What lands in the logbook, where the research comes from, and why every entry exists in both German and English.

Johann Emrich 3 min read Potsdam · Germany

Dalbi is an app, not a publisher. But across 1,102 mooring stations, 99 official German waterway signs, and a waterway network from the Saarland to Rügen, plenty of material doesn’t fit on a map view: stories about individual moorings, explanations of the Gelbe Welle certification, short research notes, background on the routing logic. This logbook is the place for those.

What goes here

The plan isn’t to publish as much as possible. The plan is that each entry pins down something concrete that the app can’t carry but a person on the water can use. Six categories are planned:

  • Mooring portraits — single stations: where the dock actually is, what a night costs, who runs it, what services exist. Starting on the Mosel, Spree, and Müritz.
  • Water touring — day stages and multi-day routes with maps, water-level notes, and realistic travel times.
  • The Gelbe Welle explained — what the German Tourism Association’s certification (active since 2004) actually covers, what it doesn’t, and how it differs from commercial star ratings.
  • Canoe — moorings and waterway rest stops built for canoeists. With notes on portages, boat storage, and access points.
  • Marinas and fuel stops — larger harbours, diesel and petrol berths, opening hours by season.
  • Signs and water levels — the 99 official German waterway signs from the federal reference, and how current water levels shift routing on the inland waterways.

How we research

Location data comes from OpenStreetMap. Waterway data comes from the federal waterway network maintained by the Wasser- und Schifffahrtsverwaltung des Bundes (WSV). Both are openly licensed — ODbL v1.0 and dl-de/by-2-0 respectively. Photos come from our own captures, operator submissions, and Wikimedia Commons. Every photo carries author and licence attribution.

If a piece of information isn’t from an openly-licensed source, a named operator statement, or an on-site observation — it doesn’t show up here.

— Dalbi editorial principle

When we speak directly with operators, we say so. When an observation comes from us (a mooring, a photo, a conversation at the water gauge), we say so too. If you want a station’s location verified, or you’ve spotted an error: a short email is the way.

Why bilingual

Boaters from the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Czechia, France regularly cross Germany’s inland waterways. The app is available in German and English. The logbook is too — every entry has a translationKey that pairs the German and English versions. Clicking the language flag in the header takes you to the matching post, not back to the landing page.

What you won’t see

  • No newsletter. If you want to follow along, the /en/blog/rss.xml feed delivers the logbook in an open format.
  • No affiliate links to boat gear, no sponsored mooring recommendations, no “top 10” lists that are advertising in disguise.
  • No paid route packs. The app’s routing is offline and complete; the logbook explains it, doesn’t sell it.

What’s next

The first substantive entry is an explainer on the Gelbe Welle’s actual certification criteria — the source document only lives as a PDF on the DTV website, and that format makes it unnecessarily hard for people to find. It now sits in the logbook. A mooring portrait follows in June — Mosel first, then Spree and Müritz. Every entry exists in both German and English.

The app is on the App Store. Google Play follows once the listing is approved.