This is the same area on the Navionics app: Using the SeaNav app I zoomed in to take a closer look at Scarborough harbour and this is what I found ( click the images to enlarge):Īs you can see, the location of the cricket club is pretty clear, and I can find my way to Marks & Spencer with no problem, but where’s the harbour? One of the places we may stop this summer is Scarborough on the East coast of Yorkshire. Let me show you an example of how these apps stacked up against each other. Ultimately though, a navigation app is only as good as the chart data it contains, and in this area SeaNav was pretty poor in comparison. Menus are more easily accessible and the whole user experience just seems to be that little less contrived. When first using the SeaNav software, it instantly has a much better feel than Navionics. Navionic’s marketing strategy means that their charts are expensive.

As good as these charts are though, I’ve now paid for them three times – once for the on board systems, once for my iPhone, and now once more for the iPad. In fact the exact same data is used in our on board Raymarine plotter so the charts in the iPad appear exactly as they do on the boat. On the other hand, the charts they use are excellent. I’ve had the iPhone version of this app for a while now and find that I continuously need to hunt through the poorly thought out menus to find anything other than its most basic features. I’ve used Navionics software before and am not their greatest fan.

To this end I fired up the iPad and tried out two of the better looking marine navigation applications that claimed to support UK waters: the well established Navionics UK & Holland and the significantly cheaper new kid on the block SeaNav UK. Although we have some great navigation equipment on board, I wanted to get something that we could use while away from the boat to draw up passage plans.

Navionics anchor alarm