i-Boating: Marine Charts & Gps App Reviews

Doesnt seem to be the most user friendly app. Im accustomed to my Humminbird fish finder/chart plotter in my old boat. New boat has built in depthfinder and I wont be fishing with it so I would like a phone app that can chart the lake contours for me to help avoid underwater obstacles and assist with nighttime navigation to and from a beachfront campsite. Played around a little with waypoints and routes at camp, but havent had a chance to try driving with the app yet. Too early for a review, but I was prompted to rate the app already so here I am. If its good I wont hesitate to pay for the premium model, but it has to be good, and I dont see it yet.

Hesitant about trying but glad I did! Navigated a lake I had never been on before at night. Very pleased

I just bought and used the app during a week-long kayak camping trip in British Columbia around the Broughton Archipelago, and the app worked great. One thing I wish it could do is record only one GPS track even if you pause the track recording, say for a lunch stop. When you pause track recording, it stores it as a stand-alone track for that day. When you start recording again after your stop and then stop at your next stop, it records that as another track for that day. It would be nice if it could actually pause the track and just record one track for the day instead of multiple tracks. This is just a personal preference. The app will still let you get the stats for one individual or all daily tracks combined, which is great. This really only becomes a little bit of a problem when you want to export your tracks to something like Google Earth. This process is a bit cumbersome, as you have to export the individual track to yourself (it sends an e-mail to the address specified in the app), open your e-mail with attachment on your phone (the attachment doesnt show up on your e-mail opened through your PC, at least it didnt for me), and forward it to yourself again, then the gps track attachment shows up in your e-mail on your PC, and then you can now download. The file extension is ".gpxgz" The "gz" threw me off, as Google Earth does not recognize it. I contacted iBoating support and got a response right away and learned that the "gz" on the end is a compressed file. I had to download a file compression/decompression program (I used WinZip) to uncompress the file, and once I did that it was a simple drag-and-drop into Google Earth. If you want to combined the multiple tracks into one, you have to open the individual .gpx track files in a text editor and then combine them into one file (be careful to only copy the tracking data, as each file contains a few lines of text at the beginning and the end of the file that you dont need to duplicate). Overall I really like the app and would recommend it. I havent used any other nautical chart apps, so I dont have anything to compare it to. One thing I also downloaded to go with this app is a "Chart Symbols and Abbreviations" app that complimented iBoating. I would recommend this app. I did not give it 5 stars because of how cumbersome it was to export recorded tracks into Google Earth. I do have the process down now, though.

Bargain app if you are looking for something with easy to use GPS features and do not want to spend a lot of money. A great backup app for a full fledged plotter.

You would never get lost with this app and iPhone gps. Precisely shows you on the chart with instant heading. Very easy to eyeball if you are heading towards shallow waters.

I sail on a lake whose level changes over the course of the year, and islands pop up when the level drops. The ability to set an offset from the "full" level is wonderful. One night trying to navigate through the islands, the gps showed my exact location and I was able to avoid the shallow areas. I am not familiar with route summaries, etc. one day I saw the average speed and distance, and the next day I couldnt find that info anywhere. Hopefully studying the documentation will help.

No maps for Colorado River and Lake Havasu

Cool. But will eat your battery. In less than 30mins of gps use i was down 40%

Have yet to get this app to even function .

This is just what I was looking for on my trip to Marathon. You can easily find coordinates and places of interest. Fantastic!

Nice app but not free, free trial then pay for pro version to use GPS plus each map. Overall nice for a weekend boater

No instructions. Cant set up. Waste of time.

Great charts, extremely useful, a little off on the locating, but then again, its a free app.

The tech support was extremely prompt and helpful when we ran into an issue with downloading map cells. Thanks to the timely response we were able to get everything downloaded before the trip. The app works great offline.

Excellent GPX support. I was able to import all the GPX routes into the app with very little effort.

Thanks for adding support for USGS aerial imagery. Very useful in studying nearby terrain.

Navigating the Louisiana and Mississippi coastal areas can be quite tricky, but this app has helped to simplify any route planning throughout the region. Im no longer nervous about taking my 45 cruiser into the Mississippi Sound and getting through shallow areas due to the incredible accuracy of the apps soundings. Thank you!

Long time user. This new version blows away their old product. The maps are detailed and fast. Love it!

Love the simplicity.. Recommended.

Misleading it is not what they claim to be, just lost $14+