Savvy Navvy - Navionics | Navigation Special 

Thank you for putting this together Steve. We were eager to see how someone would review us in direct comparison with Navionics (to be honest, we fancied our chances). We'd be really happy to answer any specific questions from your viewers and hear their feedback after using the app - we have a 2-week free trial too, so they can dip their toe in the water with no risk. The savvy navvy Team

As a USCG licensed Captain, former Schooner Captain, offshore racer, and sailing instructor, I truly enjoyed your review. Short and concise while highlighting the most commonly used features of both apps. I too grew up on paper charts (using the old LORAN-C system!), and I too use both these apps today.

An excellent well thought out demonstration, Savvy Navvy looks very interesting. Thanks for the time and effort, and of course the navigational skills, and experience to help us all.

Thank you for posting this Steve, brilliant tuition 👍

Very educational and inspiring. I am going to dive into savvy navvy as well as combining navionics with my onboard raymarine.

Another informative and interesting film, thanks very much

Simply brilliant summary - thanks

Thanks for this interesting review, and as you said it's always pro and cons with what ever solution you choose. I will indeed have a closer look at Savvy navvy. Cheers.

Returning to sailing after a break of almost 20 years has been a revelation. As someone who always used paper charts, I seldom do now. I have 2 tablets and 3 phones all with native GPS (not network) running navionics and savvy Navvy and a plethora of other apps which have all but made paper charts obsolete. This direct comparison was really useful and I also tend to use both apps for much the same reasons. Savvy navvy for planning and Navionics for actual passage making simply because I find the Navionics interface simpler and easier to read when sailing. Great video, really instructive and good to see some of our frequent haunts too!

Thank you doing that, easy to understand description. Great compassions too.

Great feature on Savey Navvy. thank you.

Have used Navionics now for many years and find it incredibly useful, especially as we are doing so much family inshore sailing. That and predict wind for the forecasts. Yes its a faff to use multiple apps, but I know them and trust them. Redundancy of systems is key, I always have at least two devices with navionics on board at any one time. Great tech corner. Thank you

Good information, thanks. Hope you have a great summer cruising.

Excellent. I learned so much today. Thank you!

Excellent presentation, I have played with both apps and will use both for comparison.

Great comparison, thank you! I sail in the Bristol Channel and tide planning is really important to me..

Worth subscribing for this comparison alone - thank you

Great info Steve! I've been struggling with the UI on qtVlm for a year now to get weather routing, Savvy Navvy has at last produced what I wanted with a decent Navionics style UI!!

Another excellent tutorial !

I’ve learnt more watching this video ,then any class room I’ve attended

Great content as usual, many thanks.

Another great video, very good overview and comparison. Interesting to see how you Navigate. I’m sure we’ll see an update after you’ve used Savvy Navvy in anger. Thanks again

Wonderful vídeo. Congratulations.

Brilliant presentation!

That was an incredibly helpful video which has pursuaded me to download savy navy ( along with Navionics which I presently have ) - thank you. Henry

I was at sea in 1969 and as an apprentice navigating officer and all we had was charts, we used to get admiralty notices in most ports with corrections to charts, like a change buoy lighting or a moved sandbank etc. We had to correct them where relevant. We took noonday sights and worked out the position using that and dead reckoning, it was within a few miles which is ok while out on the open sea. I am still here to tell the tale. I knew sailors who could predict the weather pretty accurately from years of experience behind them, they were real sailors. These days a simple rope splice will have most "sailors" a bit lost. NEVER rely on technology it breaks down. learn the basics, using a sextant and dead reckoning, trust in your own abilities and practice taking sights each day.

Well done. Very informative. Thank you.

Really helpful - I learnt a lot re the Navionics. thank you

Another great video Steve. Practical and informative for cruisers. And how refreshing AT LAST to hear from someone as experienced as yourself, that you don’t carry charts. We have precisely the same set up as you. Navionics and Savvy Navvy on multiple devices (Plus Nav on the B&G). They are both brilliant. Nav costs £40 for U.K. Sav Nav Elite £65 for global coverage. SV is far better for route planning under sail and the app just gets better and better all the time. We like to plot route and then flick between different days/times to find the fastest route. Far more accurate way of judging sailing time, taking into account tacking/tides/wind. Sav Nav also allows us to pull off our final route (via email) with relevant waypoints as a GPX file which we can load via an SD card onto our Chartplotter. So we use Savvy Navvy for passage planning and Navionics for passage making, If Savvy Navvy could make the visuals for depth contours a little more detailed and visually readable (not enough contrast/colour etc) then I reckon we’ll only need one app for the future.

It might surprise you, but as a computer based instrumentation designer, I will always have a belt and braces paper back up. For those of us who sail more modest boats on a strict budget we have to be more circumspect. I learnt my lesson depending on pure electronics on a cross channel trip. The alternator failed and by the time I was 10 miles off Alderney my batteries were exhausted. Thank goodness for paper charts and my half hourly recording of position.

Great edit and info

Great precise video no waffle, earned a subscribe and will check out your other videos. Cheers guys!

Great Thanks Garry

I will have you know I have watched all and I do mean ALL the top youtuber Sailing channels and you're Sailing Vessel, is dare I say the sexiest!

Really helpful. Thanks.

Very informative, I’ve taken a trial with savvy navvy

Another great vid. In the States, Sirius Weather provides a weather overlay for Navionics on Raymarine. It is a little pricey with hardware and subscription but it only has to save us once!

Well-argued and easy to watch as always, thank you. There's no doubt that GPS and electronic navigation have made sailing safer, and we (probably the MAIB too) would argue that any skipper would be crazy not to use the instruments they have at their disposal. On the other hand, we'd be very nervous without running a combination of paper chart and written logbook alongside electronics, even for short journeys. Whatever else happens, the pencil marks on the chart and in the book are going to be there for the duration of your passage (or until you sink - in which case, the whole discussion is moot). On questions of tide and weather, it really takes no time at all to calculate these manually and keep them under observation (though of course it's nice to have them presented graphically). It might be a problem to suggest to novice sailors that electronics are the answer in this respect, as there's a risk of running into danger in the same way that a driver might end up in a ditch - because the GPS said it was okay. Where we're really with you is the fact that charts are only as good as the day they were produced (Exmouth, for example, seems to change every tide). It's easy to update them, of course, but if you consider that some areas around the UK were last surveyed in the 19th century, it would suggest that neither paper nor electronics do quite the job that a good eyeballing can do :)

Liked this, as a novice coastal sailor found the review helpful

Very interesting and we'll put together video. The three videos of yours I have watched are all excellent.

I’m trying to look at those apps, but all I can see is your lovely boat 😍

very informative many thanks

very useful thanks

Will deffinately try out, not sure it is any good in Madagascar. But will try anyhow. Great tutorial!

Hi Steve, After carefully reading your reply to the issue of paper charts I will concede to your argument but I also wish to thank you for the demo and analysis you did on these 2 options for electronic navigation. I have been using NV paper Charts and their accompanying (free!) chart plotting software for about 3 years and have been happy with the results per se but the current electronic charts went out of validity last month so I decided to do some research before shelling out to renew the NV set or an alternative. NV seemed a very capable chart plotter in that it has inclusive weather and tidal stream overlays and the Auto-routing function included but after 3 years I had never quite figured out how the Auto-routing worked so I contacted the NV help desk and after much faffing around I was told it was not yet available in UK waters (you have to toggle off Auto and put waypoints in manually). I have now done a trial of Navionics and Savvy Navvy and the latter seemed like the best fit for me - but wait, I like to do my passage planning on my MacBook (larger screen) and the App on the Mac said I needed the latest M1 processor to use it. I was also unsure of whether my iPad (which does not have a SIM card for mobile signal) would allow GPS tracking. Unfortunately, after 48hrs dialogue with the Helpdesk at Savvy Navvy I was not able to get a definitive answer to these questions so I came back to this video and got contact details for Ben at Pro Marine Store. Ben is an absolute star and seems to know far more about Savvy Navvy than their own Helpdesk! So thanks for the video Steve and a huge vote of confidence and thanks to Ben. I will be spreading his praises and giving him the first call for anything I need for my boat

Great video Steve very informative, more navigation videos would be amazing:)

Nice steady and informative review, just a bit shocked to see the lack of life jackets during that Italy / Croatia crossing? Anycase, we run a Garmin 10" auto routing Nav system which is very powerful but sometimes that's to its determent. With the Garmin we get extremely detailed charts but I can really see the beauty of running the Savvy Navvy alongside, mainly for the tide and wind information. The autoroute facility was something which sold us on the Garmin but in saying that, it can only be used when you are on the boat with a GPS fix. We like to plan our routes in the comfort of our home and then transfer them to the plotter but the autoroute function keep trying to navigate from our home position 120 miles inland. Of course we can create routes with waypoints but with modern electronics it's nice to take away some of the guess work. I suspect we will run Savvy Navvy to see what it thinks and then replicate this on the Garmin and save it as a route, mainly because the Garmin has Nema and a through hull depth sounder, plus the screen is extremely bright. It would be a real bonus if we could create charts on Savvy Navvy and then pump them into the Garmin but I guess that's asking too much. That or Garmin do a firmware update allowing us to create an auto route from any given location.

Excellent video, I've also used Neptune Navigations systems for passage planning, it gives me optimal times of departure based on tides and can import wind grip files. Might be interesting to compare in a future video. George.

Also got a good deal on Savvy Navvy and really enjoying it

Thanx for this review! First several day trip in our lives is coming up (Kefalonia - Malta), so it's a nice "second opinion giver" to see if we don't do stupid things. 😁 Happy greetingz, Wim

I’m satisfied with Weather 4D on Ipad with also Navionics. The 2 systems are complementary

Love SN as a planner and plotter with the boats instruments as primary. only thing to watch is sometimes the routing and depths can be squiffy sometimes. SN say its the settings but would always preview the route etc always download the maps before you set off..

Thanks, I agree with your conclusions, I haven’t dragged my sextant out for years. Have gone completely electronic been using Navionics for some years but thought your review was very informative. SEAiq is another app with similar features that works particularly well in US waters downloading charts and weather data directly from the NOAA website.

We have sailed cross the North sea and in the Baltic sea with only electronic charts. Now we are going to the Med but now we got some old charts that came with boat

Lekker man lekker

Always.!!!!!! Order paper charts online or by package delivery for the trip ahead ,they are updated and ready to use. Simply because one single worst time event,and you are without power ,charts and compass will be left behind ready to use. As a master mariner in offshore I would give this advice .

Steve another great informative video. (I for one, don’t think “you are dangerous”!!). I like the idea of using both programs for different situations. I think where this will really be useful is when you are going into a harbor that you have not been before. I find it interesting that Savvy Navvy (thanks Dave) has left you a comment AND has replied to others comments. Seems like a great company. Time will tell. BUT nothing from Navionics?! All the best Richard.

Thanks for the review. I still use paper charts for my pleasure and an iPad with 2 apps: iNavX with vector Navionics charts and Weather 4D with raster maps from SHOM and UKHO. I use Weather 4D for routing, and export routes to iNavX. You can buy outstanding e-book tutorials by Francis Fustier for both apps in French and in English on Books. In order to increase the battery autonomy of the iPad, I keep the GPS of the iPad on « off » and I use the GPS signal of the AIS by wifi. AIS targets are also uploaded and presented on maps on both apps by wifi. My cockpit is far less protected than yours. My iPad is in a water- and shock-proof case by Andres Industries. The only issue is an insufficient luminosity of the screen in full daylight. You can buy from ITabNav on internet Andres cases as well as adapted sun-shades. Fair wind! Philippe (Malango 870 Loarwenn)

As a slow learner, I appreciate the way you explain complex things in simple terms. I understand people use GPS these days but I am very curious to learn how a/the sextant works (are they all the same or are there variations?). I hope that you can come up with a video to explain how it works. Thanks Steve!!

Spot on, Steve - including your comments on redundancy and WWIII fears. I place much more confidence in a handheld GPS, batteries in shrink-wrap, and a fold-up solar charger in the life raft than grabbing a paper chart and pencils on the way out and hoping it will survive the prevailing conditions. Each to his own, but the Luddites do appear to be particularly reactive. And obtuse. Unfortunately, Mr. Sextant et al still appear to unnecessarily complicate the curriculum for Yacht Masters and other qualifications, putting off many youngsters. This is no doubt a result of the curriculum being set by those of a we-had-to-do-it-and-so-will-you mindset. Morse code, ditto; it should all be the territory of anoraks instead of still being taught in navigation. I find it akin to expecting learner-driver to how to saddle a horse before licensing them to operate a motor vehicle. Just in case, you know!

Really interesting to see how you use electronic navigation apps - amazing how quickly they’re taking over navigation and making built-in options and paper charts less relevant. Thanks!

Great info, thanks, I am just now in the process of trying to decide what I should do for a second chart plotter and this help immensely. Say, do you have recommendations on dinghy? Alum Keel/Inflatable Keel/FG Keel......Hypalon/PVC......High Pressure Floor/Solid Floor???

Great information and clearly explained. What brand of fleece is the ‘Norwegian ‘ Brx technology . It looks very comfy. Tim Oldman

Diversity is useful in many thing, particularly where safety is concerned.

Thanks for putting this together for savvy navvy plus Navionics, would Samsung a7 with 4g be sufficient for those apps.

Great comparison thanks for your time and sharing it. Will be looking at Savvy Navvy. I think nowadays there is a great reliance on electronic charts and mostly they are ok but certain circumstances are not updated..Navinoics give the impression of thousands of updates every day but this is not true of all tricky entrances subject to change by shoaling strong winds etc... Take a look at The River Deben entrance Suffolk on the up-to date Navionics chart viewer on there website to see what I mean. (Buoys and banks shown all over the place!)They get away with this by a small warning sentence...There is an up-to date chatrlett on the East Coast Pilot website from Imray which completely contradicts Navionics.....My point is, you have to take into account all of the available information to ease the anxiety of sailing,and not religiously rely on your charts....Electronic or Paper.... Happy and safe sailing to you both... Robin

Navionics Boating has a distance and heading tool that I love. I sight an aid to navigation with my compass and get a heading. However if I start to take a second bearing, the first one vanishes. If the app was able to accumulate up to 3 lines at a time, it could be used to get a fix. Sometimes the satellite datum could be off, or the chart can be inaccurate. It's also a way to be sure the object I am looking at is what I think it is. I sent Navionics a suggest that they give it the ability to retain up to 3 lines at a time. Maybe if you like the idea, you could suggest it and they would listen to you more than me.

So I'm not a sail boater, but I actually watched your whole video, and I actually learned a lot I was very interested in the side by side, I didn't want to go out and buy a radar and mapping system that would be very very expensive, so I find that the ipad's and apps side by side work really well, and its cheaper I am interested in knowing if on the routing will it following you or its just a static map thank you and yes I subscribed

your comment on Brighton Marina 🤣.

Great Steve, any plans to review the weather apps?

GPS is good for a basic idea of where you are but my plotter always has me on land when I am nearby. I prefer to rely on visual and paper charts near land and my two phones each with numerous GPS maps (particularly the Russian ones which are difficult to find now). And always place importance on the compass and general heading with mental notes for when veering off and for how long. Even small charts/maps can be effective as long as you can make rough distance calculations to get a general idea. I am leaning more and more away from tech due to all the issues associated with them. However as always multiple (backup) systems is always a benefit.

I tried the free trial of Savvy Navvy and ridiculously it still had lots of essential features locked out so the planning/use trial I wanted to do was impossible to do. Thats like going to do a test drive in a new car but the dealer not letting you leave the car park!! I decided to stick with Navionics.

Great intro to both SV and Navionics, Steve - many thanks. I’m curious about the “no charts” strategy, with a bunch of iPads and phones as a replacement. You mention they’re sensitive to heat, water etc. which can be a nuisance, but with the eccentricities of Musk, sabre-rattling by Russia, 3rd World War conspiracies in the background, how reliable are satellites in the near future? Running out of your subscriptions without internet access could be interesting. The “no charts” downsides apply in light aviation as well….

I have savvy navvy. If you put it on tides, click on your chart, say over an area where the information tells you the lowest mean depth is, say 8 meters; in the diagram to the right that pops up it tells you that at low tide it is 2.3 meters. Also if you click on a tidal river and it says it is -0.6 at lowest tide. when you click on it again the diagram on the side will say 1.4 meters say ?????? If i take what it says then I will run aground or not go particular directions...

I really enjoy your Technical Corner features, keep them coming please! I am about to buy an ipad for putting my electronic charts on, what specification would you suggest, as there are loads of different ipads? Which one do you use?

Hi Steve, regarding screen brightness at night with Navionics, have you tried Invert Colours on your iPad? I have set this as a shortcut, three taps on home button to use Inverted Colours and three taps again to revert to normal. Great at night 👍

Ever tried using a chart in high winds and rain? No, consigned to the saloon table... They both seem invaluable and very effective on a tablet - we're basing out next hardware purchase on these bits of s/ware. So far the Ipad comes out best, and it's got a built in barometer, surprisingly useful. Great reference review, well done. I didn't think Savvy Navvy would run on a laptop... does this require an additional license?

Steve, did you check out Time Zero yet? You should if you haven’t yet.

Good info, Steve, thank you. Keep them coming ;-) Since I am already here, I am having the hardest time finding the manual for Navionics, the tutorials from various sources I find sorely lacking, maybe I am getting old and dumb. Would you know how to delete a waypoint in Navionics? Or shorten the route you have laboriously prepared by removing the end waypoint? Better yet maybe you could make a video tutorial for Navionics, I find your presentation style very clear, concise and to the point.

At the moment we have paper charts and a ray marine c70 plotter fixed at the helm planning to get a iPad ( yes we don’t own a iPad) will the iPad we buy need cellular to work Savi nav ?

Hi Steve, is there an option to upload your Savvy Navvy route to your Navionics system for auto pilot etc? Cheers... Great content by the way, how things have changed over the years...

Thank you for this very informative and well presented video. We learn so much from your presentations. If working below, can a stand alone iPad pick up a GPS signal or is it necessary to connect to an external GPS Antenna?

Very useful and interesting. I've had trouble with Navvy Savvy on my iPhone, had to get a refund as it would constantly crash. But I would really like to like it.

Excellent presentation Steve🙏 Thank you. My wife wishes to learn the sexton. Can it be used on electronic charts? I hate to get paper charts just because she has a sexton.

Thank you for this comparison. I tried SavvyNavvy on a 360 nm non stop around Seeland DK. It‘s a pity that SavvyNavvy doesn’t allow AIS overlay, but they say this is coming. Much more annoying is that SavvyNavvy wouldn’t accept a route under the Great Belt bridge, apparently thinking that this is a land barrier, suggesting a detour of 124 nm around Odense, I.e. a Full day of sailing! I understand that this is a new system, and I very much like the idea of a weather overlay, but shouldn’t the map material be ok? Maybe I made a mistake? Will see.

The storage behind your cockpit is it something you purchased and put there? If so where did you get it from?

Surprised your not using Aquamaps

Another great video, so I thought I would "help the RU-vid Algorithm".. I hope this message does not get truncated!.. I also use electronics (mostly IPad) on our boat, and I have tried lots of software. In particular I wanted to have good tidal planning so I had also tried Savvy Navvy, and it is impressive, - But there are some points I think you could have added, mainly about the pricing structure, and which "level" you were demonstrating. The Tidal Streams for example are only on the most expensive subscription option.. I have a couple of other suggestions for interesting navigation and planning software that you might like to look at: First is QTVLM (meltemus.com). This is a IOS / windows program that also downloads weather Gribs and displays them very nicely. It can also download Tide gribs (who knew these existed!) and using both can also do routing calculations, although I think this is less easy than Savvy Navvy. But they do have option for multiple routing start times, so you can see how altering the departure will work. Charting on QTVLM - at least in UK for me, comes from a VisitMyHarbour chart pack - very affordable.. You can perhaps add comments on the advantages / disadvantages of owning charts vs downloading and subscriptions!!. QTVLM also has multiple NMEA instrument input/ output options, and overcomes the problem of many of the other apps, in that you can send waypoints back to your autopilot. (Navionics and (I think Savvy navvy?) can see instrument data, but cannot send waypoints back to the boat instruments. - Sending this sort of data back to the boat is very helpful, as you can have a (waterproof and sunlight readable!) repeater showing bearing to waypoint / time to waypoint etc.. You also failed to mention INavx, the granddaddy of the IOS apps. This is so good that it was the main reason I got the Ipad at all. It can do gribs, but for various reasons (mainly I did not want yet another subscription!) , I use weather4D for that. So I cannot comment on its Grib display, but the rest of the interface is superb, and it sends waypoints back to my Raymarine autopilot (and displays AIS) really easily. Next app I would recommend you look at is Weather4D on the Ipad- this is very nice for reviewing gribs, and the more expensive Weather4D routing and navigation, does routing as well.. An advantage of this app is that it is buy once, and if you can do without the "high resolution grobs"- which need a subscription, then that is the only cost.. The standard GFS gribs are absolutely fine for most purposes! Lastly, and because you have a PC.. I would wholeheartedly recommend getting a copy of Neptune Navigation's passage planner. I have had one for years, and this single program is the reason i carry a PC tablet as well as the IPad.. I am less concerned about using polars to calculate best course based on gribs, which is what the newer Savvy navvy and QTVLM (and Weather 4D routing ) do.. But Passage Planner does do tidal routing really well. With multiple departure times being able to be calculated at a click, so you can see the effects of leaving later/earlier. A great tool for getting reluctant crew up earlier! I actually have a small thermal printer that I use to print out the (selected departure) passage plan from this program, and we use this printout on passage. Writing the actual time of arrival against each waypoint gives a good estimate of how well we are doing, and gives a fall back if the electronics fail.. getting the cheap thermal printer to work with the PC was quite another matter, but again, this has earned it place onboard. Neptune have a version of the App on Android, but I have not looked at it (no android!). Looking at my ipad I also have Imray apps, great for showing Admiralty charts, but not as good as InavX for actual use on passage, and also they cannot send the waypoints "back". Navionics is easy to use, but again - it cannot send the waypoints back to the boat.. All the very best Dagnall

Hello fellow Mr Norway. I agree you may be better off with day-fresh electronics if you sail in un-known waters. However, since sub-surface rocks, waypoints and charts haven't changed much since the vikings sailed the local waters here up in the North, I will continue to use my paper charts - at least as back ups when I'm hit by lightning and everything goes black.

can you have waypoints with the name of the waypoint showing on the screen on savvy navvy? I use navionics but it doesn’t allow this

Great video thx. What is the iPad bracket you use in the dog house? Ive been scouring the net for a decent one and that looks good!

Excelent video but can you acess Galileo with ipad or only gps?

I purchased two small craft portfolios containing all the paper charts for Spain, and they came with keys for the whole Med, which was nice. The problem I have is that my iPad Pro draws too much current for the average 12v/USB car style charger, so doesn't charge properly. How do you charge your iPads? Ah, just watched the last couple of minutes and seen your bike lead. So now the question becomes, have you seen any chargers which can supply more than 1A, the iPad Pro is really hungry when the battery is low.

What plan of Savey Navvy were you using, they have three options?

Not sure if this is a stupid question but can't you just download the predict wind GRIB file and view it offline instead of taking screenshots?

While I agree in principle I also know those early experiences using more primitive forms of navigation are essential if Murphy's law rears its head and takes away the electronic solutions.

We have found the sonar charts on Navionics to be pritty useless, when you have a rise of tide of say 3m then its the green drying bits that are of interest, I know I have enough depth on any blue bits of the chart (it must be over 3m) but the drying areas may or may not be deep enough to cross. Navionics remove all the data from the green areas when you switch to sonar charts!

Steve I have RE-watched this episode again as my torn between Navionics & Savvy Navvy. What are your thoughts as you have used them for awhile now? All the best Richard.

Steve, can you please tell me which gps tracker you use to connect the ipad with?

Thanks Steve, that was a very interesting comparison. As a Navionics user I'm keen to see if new pretenders can knock them off their perch. There is another factor in the electronic vs paper charts, as you're planning a circumnavigation have you done any research into likely costs of both for the whole trip?