• We apologize for the somewhat convoluted sign-up process. Due to ever-more sophisticated attacks by chatbots, we had to increase our filtering in order to weed out AI while letting humans through. It's a nuisance, but a necessary one in order to keep the level of discourse on the forums authentic and useful. From the actual humans using WCP, thanks for your understanding!

Savvy Navvy

AlphaEcho

Paddler
Joined
Jan 24, 2010
Messages
190
Location
Quadra Island, BC
I've been keeping an eye out for boating apps that offer features for paddlers (and human powered craft) not just the sailing and motoring crowd.

This one showed up in my feed today. It is clearly positioned for the aforesaid crowd. It comes out of the UK, but they seem to have detailed charts covering the Pacific Coast. It may be useful. and it seems to offer a shade more than Garmin's Navionics ... if you go for the Elite plan. https://www.savvy-navvy.com/pricing

The rub is the pricing. The Essential plan, which offers less than Navionics, is $35 CAD/yr. Explore offers about the same as Navionics, costs $80 CAD/yr. Elite is $90 CAD/yr. For that you get a "tidal streams atlas" and "satellite mode".

You can try out the app for 2 weeks for free, but first you give them your payment info. If you want to opt out, you have to remember to do it before the 2 week trial is up. Take that as you will, but it feels a mite predatory to me. I deleted the app off my phone.

I'd really appreciate it if anyone who has tried this app can offer up their practical experience with it. I'm still curious to know if their charts are useful (screenshots maybe?) and if the interface is better than Navionics (which is a rather low bar IMHO).

SavvyNavvy.jpg
 
Usually with these free trials that require payment info to unlock the first thing I do after filling it out is unsubscribing. You can generally continue to use the service for the trial period but then don't have to worry about remembering to cancel.

I may check out this app, but haven't heard of it until now.
 
If it was something that was a lot better than what is available otherwise, and something I'd use a few times a week, even $90/year wouldn't be unreasonable.
I try to ignore any site that promises 'Free trial!!" , then requires my credit card info. It would be just as easy for the vendor to do it 'old school' with a message after a month : "Your free trial has ended. To purchase, click here."
While I'm ranting, another thing that bugs me is buying a 2 year subscription then finding that it is 'auto-renewed' after one year...and that seems to be pretty common as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CPS
Offline (cached) charts are only available for Android and only on the ‘explore’ plan or higher. That seems completely crazy to an iPhone user that regularly paddles out of cell service areas.

Any GPS app that can cache good map layers (as an aside- for coastal navigation I actually prefer USGS topos over nav charts) plus a tide prediction app basically offers a more flexible and less expensive solution. And if I’m in cell range there are a lot of weather sites I trust and can interpret for free (windy.com, retro.yr.no, etc). When you are out of cell range, WX2inreach is nice if you need good weather with an InReach device. The basic InReach WX is terrible.

This app seems designed for yachties puttering around near civilization.
 
Last edited:
What gets me is, unsubscribe or not, they already have your email address to sell to someone else.

My experience with iNavX is you can download charts and they are there for you to use even if your subscription runs out. If I were traveling the world, that wide area charts/tides/currents would be useful. But my little world - when I can get to it - is the San Juan Islands and areas around Vancouver Island. DeepZoom covers tides and currents in the San Juans and AyeTides (combined with iNavX) gives tides/currents there and around Vancouver Island in real time - no internet or cell service needed. And there is always Ports and Passages.

One thing to keep in mind with a feature like “… four day weather forecast.” is it probably required either cell service or WiFi access to update.

Savvy Navvy seems to have useful features, but nothing you couldn’t find for less money or even free. It would be interesting to hear the source of their four day weather forecast. Some weather sources probably provide a “feed” and put at the same time put the information on their website.

Stock action is like that - you can see a trade on a website or you can pull the data to your computer and input it into whatever app you design.

One last comment on those features - note the GPS active tracking. That’s on your phone, draining your phone battery?

Just Say’n :)
 
I don’t know how many folks do this, but my ‘cached’ (out of cell range) WX wind meteogram is a phone screen-cast recording of windy.com playing the whole 9-day surface wind animation for the area I’m visiting. So helpful, it’s like cheating.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CPS
Thanks everyone for those perspectives. It's disappointing this app doesn't really add to the available options for paddlers and other small boat users. Still, your thoughts are helpful for recognizing what the right app will offer when it does appear.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CPS
I’m pretty meat and potatoes when it comes to apps for kayaking. One that I have used extensively for 2 years on my iPhone is the free Topo Maps Canada. I especially like the distance measurement function: draw a line with your finger and it gives you a distance in KM. Nothing fancy, but I always know where I am.

As someone who paddles both coastal and interior waters, I think topo maps are great.

257358AC-BCEB-4854-81A5-C676BF2848B2.png
 
On the Android side, the free OSMAnd app has worked very well for me on land-based, out of cell range adventures. I have a high level offline BC map downloaded to my phone, keep the phone in airplane mode to conserve battery and turn on GPS when needed for mapping, routing, following a pre-loaded GPX track, etc... It uses the user generated data from openstreetmap.org and has numerous plugins (contour lines, nautical charts, ski areas). Full disclosure, I have not yet checked out the nautical charts plugin, but the nice thing with OSMAnd is that you can preview the level of detail you will get on the app by browsing the maps at openstreetmap.org. Apparently the nautical charts are from a parallel project called map.openseamap.org. As primarily an inland water canoeist I will leave it to the kayakers to judge the usefulness of the information there.
 
Last edited:
I don’t know how many folks do this, but my ‘cached’ (out of cell range) WX wind meteogram is a phone screen-cast recording of windy.com playing the whole 9-day surface wind animation for the area I’m visiting. So helpful, it’s like cheating.

I have figured out how do do a screen-shot on my iPhone,:o-o: but are you able to record the whole sequence?

How? I'm asking for a friend! :whistling:
 
Sure. Swipe down from the upper right of your home screen to bring up the 'Control Center' widgets. If you see a button that has a dot surrounded by a circle, that is the video screen record button. Hit that and it does a 3-second countdown and then it records whatever is happening on the screen. When you are done, tap on the red circle in the top left to stop.

51129857323_2393f116c4.jpg


If you don't see the screen record button, go into the Settings app and look for 'Control Center'. That is where you can customize what appears in the Control Center interface.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top