Helm Boating

Helm is a marine navigation app for United States waters. It combines NOAA electronic navigational charts, USACE eHydro dredging surveys, state lake elevation data and live NOAA CO-OPS tide observations into a single depth figure calculated against the boat's draft, and it displays the survey date of each sounding together with the chart's CATZOC confidence rating, so recent surveys can be told apart from decades-old ones.

Route planning is built around the boat you enter. The route is planned for that hull, then weighted by how rough the water is along the way and how busy it is, so two boats asking for the same passage do not get the same line. Traffic separation schemes carry their own weights, so a lane is followed rather than run against. Water shallower than the entered draft is shaded and routed around, and the shallowest point of each leg is shown before departure.

161 chart packs can be downloaded to the device. Once downloaded, charts, routing, depth, tides and the anchor alarm work with no network connection.

Other features include AIS vessel traffic, an anchor alarm, a trip logbook, NOAA tide and current stations, a native iPad layout and CarPlay support.