GOOGLE MAPS FOR BOATS?
Considerable guts and self-belief verging on arrogance are required to take on the might of Garmin, Navico and Raymarine at their own game but that’s exactly what a team of ambitious young tech entrepreneurs are doing. Their Norwegian-based start-up, Orca, has just launched a new type of smart navigation system that, according to them, will reinvent the way people go boating and make traditional fixed chartplotters seem unnecessarily slow, complex and overpriced.
With Orca’s new system, users simply click on a destination and in seconds the software will work out the best route for them, taking into account the charted depths as well as the boat’s draft and speed to ensure it’s safe and sticks to any marked channels. It’s just as easy to add an extra destination en route or drag and drop any of the recommended waypoints to fine tune the selected route. It will even check the weather conditions and alert you to potential hazards or challenges as you approach them. In short they want to do for marine navigation what Google Maps has done for in-car navigation systems.
“Traditional chartplotters and multi-functional displays haven’t kept up with the expectations of
