Wednesday 17 September 2014

10 Smart Phone Navigation Apps for Boating Lovers

It is obvious that when you are leaving home you won’t go without your mobile phone in your hand. The other thing that I am going to say is also very obvious that when you are going to a ship deck you won’t go without having any boating application in your phone. If you do not know then here are some applications that are new and extremely helpful for completely controlling your boat directions. Along with the boat directions some of the apps are also considered as fishing apps that help you in locating fishes while navigating your boats.


1. Interacting with the onboard electronics:- The best part in the nav apps is their ability to interfere with the onboard electronics of your boat and you can navigate it from the palm of your hand. Everything starting from the radar to the chartplotter to this fish finder is a very fair game. You can also use these applications to set yourself free from the wheel and can run over the nav suite from anywhere on the board. You will also come to know how these units communicate in the cell to chartplotter. But there are two systems that will help you in accomplishing this feat i.e. Furuno and Raymarine. These two applications will make you take complete control over your boat using your smart phone and the wireless LAN network.

2. Navionics:- This boat navigation application is available for both Apple and Android phones as well as for the tablets. Navionics has been popular from many years and it is known as the most popular app on water. The app is simple and offers you basic navigation functions, wind forecasts, vector chartography, panoramic pictures, terrain overlays, data related to tides and any further updation about any calamity. It will also offer you a community layer of the data which is being constantly updated by the users. Also if it has a compatible chartplotter, it will also sync with your phone or the tablet and will put all the latest chartographic updates right on your plotter. The cost for this application starts at $10 but it will go up very quickly and some of its versions are extremely expensive; iPad HD versions start at around $55. You can always check it at Navionics.

3. GPS Speed: GPS Speed is an application which is very cheap and straight which you have to love it. This will turn your iPhone into a speedometer. Having a one dollar upgrade of this application you will receive an additional speed data. You can find this on iTunes store easily. It is an amazing app to find your way.



4. AIS Apps:- There are several applications that will help you in taking advantages from the newer forms of marine electronics and these apps might not have on board with your boat. Applications like Boat Bacon which will cost you $9.99 are available only for iPhone. Shipfinder is one more app that is available for $4.99 and is also available at iTunes store. This will turn on your phone into a mini AIS receiver and as long as you want to have cell service, it will feed you data on ships that could give you a collision danger.

5. EarthNC: - will offer you nautical charting, data for the marine spot for both of your iPhone and iPad platforms. The charts mainly come with the courtesy of NOAA raster scans. Nav functions will run the gamut and will include real time navigation, route and waypoint the creation, data displays and the trip logs with it. With all new 3.1 version you can delete the waypoints which are very easy during the route creation, you can delete the waypoints from your map screen and can also delete the waypoints easily during the map screen and can also delete the waypoints, routes in the option menu.

EarthNC contains a lot of extra data, and thanks to the agreement with Marinalife, Cruisernet, and Waterway Guide that help it and share their databases. This means that you can look up at all the local listings for marias, towing services, bridge services and other as required by the user, all this just at your finger tip. This application will cost you at $25 and it will work on both the platforms.

6. Pro-Knot: - If we only talk about the power boaters, sometimes they have problems in remembering their knots. Good thing is that we can always fire up the Pro-Knot and this has given step by step instructions for helping in finding 70 different knots. You can also find some animated versions of this application. Price for this app start from $0.99 to $1.99 and depending upon this you can always choose to visit the Pro-knot.

7. Plan2Nav: - Jeppesen’s Plan 2Nav is one more amazing application that will turn your iPhone and iPad into a navigational device. This will provide you with all the basic features that include real time plotting, planning, 2D perspective chart viewing with rotating on-screen compass rose including some extra features like weather, wind and other screen overlay capabilities. The best aprt about this application is it comes for free. How can they give this app for free? It comes up with a very basic chartography data and if you want more detailed charts you will have to pay for downloading them. Most of the charts will cost you round about $20 and the rest of your scoop, you will get them from Jeppesen.

8. My Anchor Watch: This is one more application that comes in handy for overnighting on the hook and especially when you are using your cell phone as the alarm clock and you can sit it next to the berth. You can also set an alarm sector using a drift alert that will make you wake up if the anchor is dragging while you are snoozing. The best thing about this application is that it consumes very less battery and the trial version of this application is available for free; upgrading it to its pro version with all the whistles will cost you $6. My anchor watch is the application that comes for all iPhone, Android and Blackberry phones.

9. 2 Stroke Gas Oil Mix Calc Pro:- will give you exactly what its name is saying. Just plug in the recommended ratio and you will find out in a blink of an eye how much oil does your boat needs and how much gas you have pumped. This application will cost you $1.

10. Wave Blazer: - And the last application is not only for the useful stuff but it is surely for fun. This Wave Blazer this is a cross platform application. The application is for free and their promotional statement is very interesting.

So here we have discussed 10 different mobile applications that are especially designed to make your boating and fishing experience a good and amazing one. This is the time to make your Android phone and iPhone to hit the water enjoying fishing simultaneously. These boating apps can also be termed as fishing app for Android and iPhone which means applications help you in navigating your boats but some of them also help you in finding fishes also in case you feel like fishing on the way.

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