If you trailer your boat, the trip starts on the highway and not at the dock. Helm is a marine navigation app for iPhone and iPad, and it has a CarPlay interface, so the nautical chart of the water you are driving toward comes up on the vehicle's built-in screen instead of a phone wedged in a cupholder.
CarPlay is Apple's system for putting an iPhone app on the screen already built into your car or truck. You connect the phone with a cable or wirelessly, the vehicle's display becomes the app's display, and the phone stays in your pocket or on the charger. CarPlay comes built into new vehicles from the major US brands, and aftermarket head units add it to an older truck. Helm ships with a CarPlay interface built in, so once Helm is on your iPhone it appears on the CarPlay screen alongside the other apps your vehicle already shows. The chart on that screen is part of a Helm subscription.
Helm's CarPlay interface is a chart view. It puts the same nautical chart you navigate with on the larger built-in display, with your position on it, so the map on the dash is the water rather than the road. That is the whole idea of it: a bigger, glanceable look at where you are headed while somebody else is doing the towing, or while you are parked at the ramp with the engine still running.
A few situations where boaters reach for it. You are an hour out from a reservoir you have never launched on, and you want to see the shape of the lake and where the ramp sits relative to the creek arm you plan to fish. You are pulling into a state park ramp at 5am in the dark and want the chart up on a screen you can read without unlocking a phone. You are in the passenger seat on the way to the Keys with tomorrow's run up on the screen while the driver stays on the road.
The trip back is when people plan the next one. The chart is on the screen, and if you ran the day on a route, the trip is in the logbook on the phone, ready to open at home.
CarPlay is the drive. The reason to run Helm is what happens after the boat is off the trailer.
Enter your boat's draft once. Helm shades the water you cannot cross and, on the coast and on Lakes Michigan, Erie and Ontario, routes around it instead of drawing a straight line over a bar. A skinny-water route for a flats boat and a route for a cruiser with a deep keel are different routes, and Helm knows which one you are asking for.
Helm reads the depth from the chart and reports it against your draft. The depth card tells you whether the figure is a charted sounding, a depth band, or water the chart has no soundings for.
| Source | What it contributes |
|---|---|
| NOAA ENC | Electronic navigational chart data for the coast and the Great Lakes, reprocessed by Helm. |
| USACE Inland ENC | The Army Corps chart for the inland rivers. |
| NOAA CO-OPS tide | The predicted tide from a station within 25 nautical miles, so a chart datum number becomes today's depth. |
Tide predictions come from NOAA CO-OPS against the MLLW datum, and tidal current arrows rotate as you scrub the time forward. The chart carries animated wind, wave and current overlays, and a multi-day strip with three-hour columns for wind, gusts, air temperature, rain and water temperature. Scrub to Saturday at noon and the arrows show you the push you will get on the run out.
Helm is offline first. There are 161 downloadable chart packs. With the pack for your water on the device, charts, depth where the chart carries it, routing in the coastal and Great Lakes packs that carry it, the measure tool and the anchor alarm all work without cell service, which is the normal condition three miles into a marsh or on the back side of an island.
Depth, speed over ground and course over ground sit on one strip. Live vessel traffic is on the chart: position, vessel type and movement status, so an anchored tanker reads differently from one under way, and the visible area refreshes about every ten seconds while the layer is on. An anchor alarm wakes you if you drag overnight. Satellite and night chart styles cover a bright afternoon and a run back after dark. Press Go on a route and the trip is recorded to the logbook, where you can bring it back up on the chart to find the same spot again next month.
Draw a line anywhere on the chart and Helm returns distance and bearing, and in the coastal and Great Lakes packs that carry routing data, a depth profile along it, including where the shallowest point falls. Use it before you cut a corner across a bar or take an unfamiliar channel on a falling tide.
Helm is native on both, and once both are signed in to the same account, routes, saved spots and recorded trips sync between them. Lay out Saturday's run on the iPad at the kitchen table on Friday night, and it is on the iPhone that drives the CarPlay screen the next morning, along with every spot you have saved.
Yes. Helm is a marine navigation app for iPhone and iPad with a CarPlay interface built in, so with a subscription the nautical chart appears on your vehicle's built-in screen on the way to the ramp.
The chart view: the nautical chart with your position on it, on the vehicle's display instead of the phone's.
Install Helm on your iPhone and connect the phone to a CarPlay vehicle the way you normally would, by cable or wirelessly. Helm appears with your other CarPlay apps. The chart view on that screen is part of a Helm subscription.
Yes. Download the chart pack for your area first. Charts, depth where the chart carries it, routing in the coastal and Great Lakes packs that carry it, the measure tool and the anchor alarm all run offline on the phone or iPad.
Yes. You enter your draft once, and from then on Helm shades water you cannot cross wherever the chart carries depth, and plans routes around it on the coast and on Lakes Michigan, Erie and Ontario.
Yes. Coastal water, the intracoastal, rivers and inland lakes. The rivers come from US Army Corps of Engineers charts and carry depth. The state lake packs draw lakes by name and shoreline from the USGS National Hydrography Dataset, and Minnesota also has state depth contours.
Free to download. Free trial included.
Helm Boating