Albin Owners Group

Just taking a survey, for those of us who use an app on their smartphone or tablet for navigation, what do you use, and why? Are there any other apps you have tried but didn't like as well?

Bonus question: does anyone use a laptop (Linux, Mac, Windows) software?

I use SEAiq on a iPad. It seems to work great. But I did wonder if there is anything else out there. It does everything I want it to. I don’t know much about the fancy chart plotters.

I have SeaClearII and used it a bit a few years back. I found it cumbersome, but I am not a tech guru. The real hitch for me came when transiting the Tacoma Narrows one fine day and it had trouble switching from one raster chart to the next and left me with a blank screen. Of course I have my Garmin plotter and there is a lot of water there for a 25 footer.

After seeing a number of posters on various forums commenting on OpenCPN, I downloaded it to my prehistoric HP laptop. With a gps dongle I find it very useful. (I think that since I already had the raster charts downloaded for SeaClear, OpenCPN simply recognized them which saved me a bunch of time.) Especially helpful for us in the Puget Sound is the overlay OpenCPN provides with real time tide and current readings.

We are what I consider newbies, some 7 years into this Albin era of our life. I tried laying out waypoints and calculating time to next ports of call and all the fancy stuff these programs let you do, but I found a ruler and a pencil and a minimum of synapse firing to be close enough. Our navigation mainly consists of, hey, we have a few weeks of vacation. How far can we go and by the way how does the weather look? We do have paper charts for most of the area we travel, the plotter, line of sight (point the boat to Useless Bay, then we'll nose around the bottom of Whidbey...what is the current in Admiralty right now...oh, that explains the 3 kts.) New water, longer distances, more critical weather patterns require a bit more expertise. Which is why we joined with DA and the Admiral on our first trip to Desolation Sound. Without their experience and encouragement we might still be stuck on Hood Canal. Many thanks to Steve and Helen and by extension this AOG collective!

I am sure there are much more sophisticated programs and approaches. We have no autopliot, save the bungee cord, so we actually do have to pay attention. Just don't get bogged in the gadgetry you miss the wondrous joy of getting out on the water.

Life has a way of interrupting our plans, so we don't do an awful lot of distance cruising, but I use Navionics "Boating" app as a secondary to our regular Lowrance Chartplotters, one running as GPS and the newer one running as sonar. Navionics offers proprietary charts and USG charts, and runs nicely on iPad and/or iPhone, which gives me a good idea of where we are and we are going.
I also like to run SeaNav for AIS and my position relative to other ships; it also offers a "heads-up-like" display/camera and (apparently decent?) wind gauges.
These as backup to preplanning via paper charts, my trusty compass and 20/20 vision.

Thanks for all of the replies!

I have predominantly used paper charts and a handheld GPS, but on my most recent passage, we used smartphones. Apart from battery life issues and USB cords stretched across the cockpit, it was nice to have a smaller screen at night, and we could pass the "chart" around easily so the whole crew knew our position, course etc. I'll look into Navionics, SeaClear and SeaIQ.

WillieC, thank you for mentioning OpenCPN. I've seen some vloggers who use it and thought I might give it a try.

I use InavX. It's a very versatile app for phone or pad.

Adding InavX to my list to check out. Thanks to all for your responses!