The best sailing apps on the market

Smartphones and tablets are as much part of sailing life as they are in every other domain. Few would venture out onto the water without one, notwithstanding their notorious aversion to saltwater. From tides and weather to logbooks, racing and route planning, there is an app for everything.

Keep your devices safe

Before you untie the painter and set out, ensure that your phone is protected from the splashes, dunkings and boshes of a standard day on the water.

As a minimum that means a waterproof case of some sort—the cheapest plastic pouches will set you back less than £10. At the other end of the scale, Otterbox does a MagSafe wireless charging case for £70-80 and Armor-X does a case with a flexible mounting and charging system for around the same price.

Now the safety bit is out of the way, let’s look at the best sailing apps available for your phone.

Navigation

Mobile phones and tablets make great chartplotters, with their built-in GPS and powerful processors. And you’ll already be familiar with intuitive control gestures like pinch-to-zoom. On larger boats, you can even display instrument data (NMEA data) with some of the apps—if you have a wifi bridge installed.

Savvy Navvy

Cost: £45 (Essential) or £89 (Elite)

A serious all-rounder, this app combines charts and navigation, tidal data, weather forecasts and marina/anchorage guide in a single package. Coverage is best in Europe (except Denmark and Turkey), the US and the Caribbean. All packages include an auto-routeing function that can handle a multi-day passage, but you get compatibility with your chartplotter and extra bells and whistles with the Explore or Elite subscriptions.

SeaNav

Cost: free app with available upgrades £19.99 UK and Ireland charts

This is a hugely capable navigation suite with chart coverage of Europe and the US. There are free updates for 12 months, depth shading, and you can also view the charts offline. It is quick to set up waypoints and routes, with the ability to import and export to other devices. The app also records your ground track. Tides, currents and GRIB-style weather overlays are available for an extra £4.99, and live AIS data costs £9.99 as part of the “pro upgrade”.

Aqua Map

Cost: free app with available upgrades £19.99 UK and Ireland

Developed for Apple devices with Retina screens, Aqua Map draws on official hydrographic office data. You can download the charts for offline use, plot routes and import/export waypoints. A £14.49 upgrade adds AIS, weather and a NMEA connection for instrument data. Compatible with Garmin’s Active Captain app.

NMEA Remote

Cost: from £11.99

Turn your phone into a repeater for instrument data with this super slick-looking app, configuring dashboard screens with all the info you want. Expand compatibility with Expedition racing software for an extra £9.49. Requires an existing wifi bridge.

Cruising guides

With frequently updated information supplied by hundreds or thousands of users, cruising guides are a natural fit for the app model. They range from the truly global to those that specialise in a particular cruising ground.

Navily

Cost: free app

Advice, opinions and photos about 20,000 anchorages, mainly in Europe and the Caribbean. Comments cover the best walks, pubs, restaurants and where to drop the hook. It is based around Google satellite mapping, and has a useful traffic light system assessing the quality of an anchorage. A £17.99 premium subscription allows you to download regions for offline use and adds in 72-hour weather forecasts.

Captain’s Mate

Cost: free, however requires £155 annual Cruising Association membership

The CA has relaunched its popular Captain’s Mate app to blend solid, almanac-style port data with members’ cruising reports. Each of 6,500 locations has a page giving an overview of factual information, including approach notes. Click on the ‘info’ tab and you can see the facilities available while a third tab gives access to valuable members’ reports. You can search for the nearest port with facilities such as fuel or fresh water.

Explore with Imray

Cost: free app, however requires a £49.99 annual subscription

Nautical publisher Imray has launched an all-new app which aims to combine navigational and recreational data for some 6,000 ports or anchorages. It blends user reports with the crucial nav info siphoned out of Imray’s excellent pilot guides. It’s quite a treasure trove, including chartlets and moderated comments from other users.

Weather

Apps range from the super simple, giving a general land-based forecast to highly specialised marine read-outs that can predict local thermal effects and route you for days ahead with the best wind.

Windy.app

Cost: free app or PRO subscription £8.99/m or £59.99/yr

Not to be confused with ‘Windy.com’, this app is aimed 100 per cent at sailors and watersport enthusiasts. It focuses on wind and wave conditions in thousands of specific spots around the coast, giving you cloud cover, rain and temperature up to 10 days ahead. The free version gives read-outs based on the small-scale GFS27 weather model, including tide times and heights. Subscribe for much better resolution, a choice of weather models and a comparison that tells you which model has proven most accurate for any given spot.

PredictWind

Cost: free app or basic subscription £29.99 and ultimate features £499/yr

One of the big apps, Predictwind has a fantastic interface, with a slick animated forecast that uses colours to reinforce the message about wind strength. You can also consult wind, waves, electrical potential, cloud, rain, pressure and temperatures. The ‘validation’ page lets you identify the most accurate forecast model in your location, although coverage is not universal. Predictwind even does offshore weather routeing that analyses wave patterns to calculate the most comfortable heading.

Squid Mobile

Cost: free app or flexible subscription from £5.49 a week to £29.99 a year

Another good looking app with some meaty extra tools for downloading GRIB files offshore. Core data includes key wind, rain, cloud and wave heights, as well as atmospheric pressure and temperature. You see GFS25 data for free, but for the full choice of weather models, flexible subscriptions run from a week up to a year. A unique feature of this app is weather routeing calculated ‘in the cloud’ to reduce satellite airtime for those offshore.

Windfinder

Cost: free app or upgrades for £1.49/m or £9.49/yr

The basic app provides a very good animated map of current wind conditions anywhere on the globe based on the GFS model. To unlock more detailed forecasts you’ll need to upgrade to Windfinder Plus for £9.49/yr or £1.49/m. This gives access to Windfinder’s own so-called 7km resolution Superforecast—you can’t switch between models as you can with other apps. Other nice features include specific ‘spots’ for which you get an instant wind, waves and tide read-out—there are 20,000 weather stations and 160,000 spots globally. Windfinder

Tides

AyeTides

Cost: £7.99

Displays tide times and heights for 12,500 locations globally, which you can search for by name or navigate to on a map. There’s also a ‘near me’ function. The basic display for each station shows the day’s high and low water times and heights, sun and moon rise times, and a tidal curve. Only available for iOS.

Tides Planner

Cost: free app

Info-rich but dated interface in this app from Imray, which covers 8,000 global locations. The free version shows you today only, so you’ll probably want to buy a £3.99 licence giving you six days ahead in UK waters. For more, it’s another £5.99. Very detailed interactive tidal curve makes this really good for big boat sailors.

Absolute Tides

Cost: free app however requires £2.99 licence

Gives access to accurate official data for UK and Ireland, an interactive tidal curve and a very handy tidal atlas.

UKTides

Cost: £3.99

Not be confused with the almost identically named UK Tides, this app from Jim Burke gives access to a wealth of accurate information, with genuine tidal curves and tidal stream info. You can also call up the corresponding month of the official UKHO tide times for any standard or secondary port up to a year ahead.

Racing apps

Sail Racer

Cost: free app however requires £25.99 racing licence

As well as analysing the phone’s GPS data for course and speed, the app can pick up the boat’s instrument data over a wifi bridge—or use Sail Racer’s specially designed Bluetooth Datalinker (€195). It will analyse wind shifts, set start/finish line and marks, and count you down. You can even plug in polars to see how efficiently you’re sailing.

VelocitySail

Cost: £0.99

Powerful app for crunching performance data as you sail. Get real time analysis of your tacks and gybes, record your track and see your course and speed over the ground with a quick glance.

Waterspeed

Cost: from £3.49/m

Essentially a course tracking tool, with the bonus of tides and weather forecasts bolted on. A unique heatmap allows you to analyse your pace afterwards and the Pro version will integrate with Strava or export track data. Designed for watersports more than big boat sailing. £24.99 for the year.

Course logging

Get your phone’s built-in GPS to save you money on a dedicated GPS chartplotter.

SailFree GPS

Cost: from £1.99 per month

Set up to look a bit like a familiar sailing instrument display, this app shows your course and speed, max speed and trip. It will also give bearings to a waypoint and calculate your crosstrack error. Graphs and course roses also give handy alternative ways to understand your course. Logs and exports your track and offers an MOB function. It also lets you set a geofence as an anchor alarm.

SailBuddy

Cost: £4.99

A ‘lightweight’ app that tracks your course and displays the boat’s instrument data via a wifi connection. Logs routes and NMEA data, which can also be exported. Requires you to have a wifi bridge or similar installed. Compatible with Apple Watch.

Marine Sailor

Cost: free app

Displays basic data including speed, max speed and GPS coordinates (sadly not lat and long), plus plots your position on a map.

Safety

MarineTraffic

Cost: free app

Displays ship’s AIS data everywhere in the world for free. Navigate to the area you’re interested in and see what’s coming and going. For an extra £9.99, you get a weather overlay and a tool that identifies nearby vessels. An augmented reality tool annotates the video feed from your smartphone with AIS details of the vessels in view. It’s a further £6.49/m for detailed charting.

IQ Nautics

Cost: free app

Like a virtual AIS system, this app will plot your position, speed and heading anonymously so that other boats using Internet-based AIS can see you. More consistently, it also tells you about all the vessels transmitting an AIS signal nearby.

Boat Beacon

Cost: £12.99

Internet-based AIS transceiver with the added ability to provide collision warnings and closest point of approach alerts. It is GPS enabled, and offers an MOB alarm, anchor watch and an augmented reality camera via in-app purchases.

AnchorPro

Cost: free app

Allows you to set an anchor drag alarm on your phone. You can also set the anchor’s position as you drop it, and get directions for recovery afterwards.

RYA SafeTrx

Cost: free app

Tracks you on passage and raises the alarm if you don’t arrive when you say you will. Follows an escalation process in the event of triggering. Family and friends can keep an eye with live position updates, and you can access weather and port info from within the app.

Logbooks

With smartphone apps able to track our position and speed automatically, it is a short step on to digital logging during a passage. These apps can detect a change of course and regularly note weather conditions alongside speed and heading.

BoatPing

Cost: free app

Creates a GPS log of your passage, which you can then analyse and share. Monitor and log your instrument data via a compatible wifi connection (not via an MFD). Developed by a couple sailing round the world.

Ship’s Log Book

Cost: £14.99

Uses the phone’s built-in GPS to note course and speed and cross references your position with the forecast conditions at that time. Phones with a barometer also note pressure and you can capture angle of heel and photographs from the voyage too. Permits manual log entries.

SailTies

Cost: free app

GPS logger that continues in the background—no need for your phone to be active. It allows you to add photos and manual comments on the voyage, then share with crew and friends.

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Now you've downloaded the right apps and you're ready to get out on the water, you may also want to consider protecting yourself through specialist boat insurance.

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