How helpful is the iPhone on boat?

[kathe]

Hi i'm new to this forum, can anybody share with me that how helpful is the iPhone on boat and is it must for me to download any apps to make my device helpful on board?

Need suggestion here................

[cmjeff]

Are you asking about recreational boats? Because this forum is focused on commercial ships&boats and most companies have policies against using iPhones on the bridge.

Some iPhone programs are quite helpful but no one wants a marine investigator to find out they used their iPhone minutes before a collision. It's a big time liability issue.

[Billy]

There are several iPhone apps that are directly marine based. You can get the full updated rules of the road. If you wanted to spend the money, there are several navigational apps. They can be expensive. I haven't used them, I assume for pleasure boats, that would help, near costal. Also a Compass. It could be used as a navigational aid. Plus GCaptain has an app also.

[Capt. Phoenix]

There is an offshore weather app for droids that I use a lot. Not sure if there is one for the iphone.

[BM2(SW/AW)INGRAHAM]

There is an offshore weather app for droids that I use a lot. Not sure if there is one for the iphone.

Is there any apps for the iPhone?

Sent from my iPhone using gCaptain

[wafinator]

There are several iPhone apps that are directly marine based. You can get the full updated rules of the road. If you wanted to spend the money, there are several navigational apps. They can be expensive. I haven't used them, I assume for pleasure boats, that would help, near costal.

My relief has one of the iPhone's navigation apps, basically just an ENC program fed by the internal GPS, nothing special, and yes, pretty expensive for what it is (I want to say like $60?). Not sure what the support for the charts are, I imagine they're the standard BSBs that you can get online for free. Its definitely just a novelty out here (unless we had to pull a Shackelton and navigate to safety in a lifeboat, then it would be extremely useful for about 6 hours, when your battery dies), could see it being somewhat useful on a pleasure craft that would only need it every now and then without investing in a full GPS/plotter or laptop-software-GPS setup; but I'd still rather have a cheap setup of the latter to actually use.

[PR-9]

They have a tide and current app that works pretty good. You can also get a taxi app that uses your map to get the cab companies around your current location and let's you call them directly from the app. And then you have your all important whether reports and apps.

[ksisk]

I use navionics USA all the time. I work on inland tugs the tide app is very useful it also has names of marinas whether they sell fuel or transient bathrooms with showers. Coast gard nav rules, current light list, when at the house I use ship finder to see who's in the river.for studying for FCC exam they FCC exam prep. And for celestial nav their is a maritime calculator. Their is scramp for offshore so you can measure roll pitch and yaw. About six weather apps. lastly the gcaptain app for iPhone and iPad.

[leigh]

Can't believe I missed chiming in on this! Thanks ksisk for the SCraMP (Small Craft Motion Program) call out. Yep, SCraMP displays your motion information and provides a user-customized warning metric when motions are becoming excessive. You can record your motion data for later review. See your current location/course/speed, and pull buoy data from within the app. And it's free. I'm just looking to help make boat ops safer, specifically focused on small craft, though as noted above, iPhones on the bridge can be a distraction and thus hindrance if not used carefully and appropriately. As always, I'm thrilled to get feedback on what folks need/want out of SCraMP!

[CaptSteve]

I had a cool knot tying app that was fun during down time. Whatever apps you download make sure they work when you are not connected to a service provider. Also, if you take it from the a/c to the back deck during July, then 24 hours in the engine room will dry it out to make it work again......so I'm told.