Review: Navionics Boating App for US And Canada

Navionics keeps improving its mobile app that works on iPhone, Android and tablets. The application is quick and works great on my iPhone and Mac tablet. This is a personal review of a boating navigation app, do not trust my word or any phone app to safely navigate your boat. Take a course, learn how to safely operate your water vehicle and carry and use appropriate (paper) charts to satisfy the law, your insurance company and common sense. That being said, on with the review. 

Most of my sailings are day trips that are less than 10 nautical miles (nm) and in very safe waters that are easy to navigate but sometimes I go further. I trusted this app with two offshore trips in the summer of 2020. The first being a 60 nm return trip and we overnighted in a beautiful hideaway called Rogues Roost, and another trip later in the summer that included two nights away and over 120 nautical miles of travel. During our three day trip, we navigated 12 nautical miles through the dense daytime fog and a tight channel. I used the app (and other devices) to confirm that we were safely in the channel and were relieved each time a marking loomed out of murkiness 50 yards on port or starboard. Yes, the maritimes can experience heavy, dense fog with little warning. The following photo is our little boat breaking out of the fog after 4 hours of blind GPS pilotage.

The app works perfectly, allowing you to plan your trip, and has a good web-based application that gives you some of the same features in your browser to allow some armchair trip planning. 

Navionics, Boating US & Canada, Features:

• Current speed, direction and time travelled
• Route planning 
• Route archive
• Route tracking and archive
• Markers with customized icons
• Weather, Tides, Sunrise, Sunset, Moonrise and set, Wind, Buoys and Currents
• In-app photos with geo placement on the charts
• Active Captain links 
• Current charts for the US and Canada
• Custom Map Layers w/ "Sonar Chart (TM)" and other overlays
• AIS Connections to a nearby receiver, over wifi
• Good price
• Web page interface for some features (good for planning)

Overall Impressions

The interface is intuitive if you have done any kind of work with maps or charts. Planning trips is easy and give you automatic and manual routing options. The following screen shows a typical harbour entrance with traffic lanes in Canada.  The charts can be downloaded over wifi or your data plan and load very quickly for new areas. 

Route Planning

Route planning with this app is intuitive once you understand it's two major modes: Automatic and Manual routing. Automatic routing will lay out a series of waypoints and routes for you, and manual routing goes from waypoint to waypoint as you place them. The on-screen instructions are pretty easy to follow. 

Tracks

Tracks worked precisely as I expected. To start "tracking" hit the "Start" button and this will turn on tracks, a time indicator, speed and distance travelled. Additionally, if you click on one of the three headings, you get additional detail on time, speed and distance respectively. Drill down by hitting the "Details" button and you can see even "maximums" stat for Max Speed, Time and Distance with comparisons to other trips, and averages for speed time and distance. I really like being able to look back at my course and see my progress. The only negative comment I have about tracks is that if you forget to turn it off, it will track your progress home in the car too, and trash all your trip stats with 45 knots of speed and an additional 7 nm home. 

This screenshot shows a route track through a channel close to home. Can you spot where I ran into a sandbank? I was NOT looking at the app when I did this and eyeballed this tricky channel. Lesson learned. This was my first time running aground. 

Here is another screenshot showing where I have taken photos in the app. You can click on the picture icon and it will show the picture that is stored in your photos. 

Here is a shot of the online web application. The website has limited features, but it's a good way to explore your charts, near and far away.