Amazing large screen GPS on the iPad – SEAiq USA IAP Review

The SEAiq app was ideal for bringing a 21' Wharram catamaran sailboat home from the Florida keys to north of West Palm Beach, some 170 miles on the Intracoastal Waterway. Loaded for two men on a four day trip there is not much room on this sized boat for big paper charts. I downloaded the free NOAA charts for the Florida East Coast and the Keys (a one time event). Once the charts are on the iPad I did not need to connect to the Internet again. As you sail along the SEAiq app finds the next chart, matches the scale and displays it for you relatively seamlessly. We had some 30 bridges to negotiate so we used the waypoints to store bridge names, most often not available on the charts. We also stored bridge clearance height and bridge opening time schedule. This provided the information I needed to talk to a bridge tender when I needed to request an opening. We used the waypoints and route tool to get distance measurements to calculate our fuel consumption on the previous days motoring. Then on a windless morning in Biscayne Bay we used the same app tools to determine that we were too low on fuel to motor all the way to the fuel dock in Miami. We idled conserving fuel for a couple of hours until the wind returned then we sailed until we were close enough to motor the last little bit to the fuel dock. Our catamaran sailboat draws less than 2 feet of water. The SEAiq app let us customize the deep water, safe water and shallow water contours on the chart to match our boat making it easier to safely sail in close to the stilt houses in Biscayne Bay. We got some great close up pictures without going aground in shoals there. In the keys these contours helped use find protected areas well outside other boat traffic to drop anchor for the night. I have had a number of occasions to contact the developer and have found them responsive. I really like this app and am looking forward to some of the improvements they are working on. I was blown away with the improvement in the latest version that allowed for back up and sharing my routes and waypoints files by iTunes, Dropbox and email. It even let me overlay my routes on Google Earth so I could find photos and land mark information along my planned route. Great Stuff!
Review by DFKipp on SEAiq USA IAP.