Reviews for Savvy Navvy Boating Navigation

I can reluctantly accept signing up and committing to pay in order to try the package, but then to find the price does not include downloading charts was a surprise. Frankly, it feels like a simple marketing ploy and starts off on a poor footing - never really knowing how much this is costing. If you're new to this, it's probably fine, but I already have bought into Navionics and Memory Map, so not prepared to keep increasing costs. If it were fixed at, say, less than £40 per year I'd persist.

I tested the full version with everything. Savvy Navvy appears fine when you first start it. However it's not great. Firstly the course to steer often takes you a strange route that you wouldn't want to go. The depth data in rivers is too far a part to be useful. i.e. lots of -3 and -2.8 but doesn't show the channel at 0. So I nearly ran a ground - was basically useless in rivers and had to sail but my depth meter and normal charts. The wind data is wrong. it doesn't easily allow you to steer a course. it keeps wanting to go from where you set the app up. I couldn't get it to do a normal turn by turn, run of the route as I was travelling it. I could preview it but not just do it. So it kept on jumping backwards to the start which was annoying. . It looks great, but is not useful. I'm still looking for a good nav app. If you decide to vary from the suggested route, it won't work out how to get to your destination from here without re-setting everything. It's just not very user friendly. for the money it's seriously not worth it. It doesn't do enough of the basics well enough to be useful.

I like the App but there are flaws. The first uploaded App worked fine but then stopped recording on the second day out on the water. So, I reinstalled the App and the layout has changed. Not for the better, I should add. It's now not showing estimated fuel consumption, which was useful, especially when you're burning a litre a minute. If I was the CEO of this company, I would get the development team around a table and have a one way conversation with them.

Saved us when our chart plotter failed. We were bringing our boat home when the engine started smoking and we had to shut it down. The wind picked up and we were able to sail, but we can't short-tack our boat in the proximity of many islands in Clew Bay. I was able to sail using the app and get close enough to the inner Bay to where a friend rescued us with a tow. Thanks Savvy Navvy. There are a few things that can be refined but overall, I appreciated having the reliable backup.

I do the passage planning conventionally using weather apps, charts and pilot books. My wife then checks the route on savvy navvy to see if there is reasonable agreement. This works well and catches issues with the app and errors in my calculations.

find it hard to pin my waypoints and zoom in and out, it's a bit clunky but it is my first few hours of using the app

There is no mode for steering, with a COG display, without a plotted route. There is no mode for providing your own plotted route - the app always calculates it for you. You have to plot a route first before setting the start time. Finally & this makes the app, IMO, useless, saved routes cannot be used because the app sits indefinitely plotting the route. It's almost like whoever wrote this app has never navigated on the sea...

I am trying to delete my trial membership. it directs me to a page called membership but the page will never finish loading so I may not hit the cancel button. all the other pages on the app open just fine except for this one to cancel and you get the spinning Circle of of death.

Update: I also wish the navigation would take into account boat type. As a kayaker, the navigation does not take the most direct route I assume to account for a larger boat overall this all works pretty well! Managing routes is a little finicky. I would also love to have visibility information in the weather section.

I have just started a 3day trial period. i heard a lot of good things about SN. However, I struggle to plot a route, but it is not easy, or even impossible. Here is my situation. I am now based in Antwerp. I want to plot a route from Canet-en-Roussillon (France) to Toulon (France). The app tells me to select a starting point. When I select Canet-en-Roussillon as starting point, that point becomes the destination point, and Anwerp is my starting point now. How is that possible? Frustrating!

Fine if you have excellent wireless coverage, otherwise it is conceptually flawed for 'proper' water users who are offshore for more than 24hrs. There are also in-app functional issues with key components. Eg downloading for offline use... 'download this area?" ....Nope! Let me choose! Try to change the area size and it's just laggy and then thinks you're putting a waypoint down! Pastel palette looks nice but for real outdoor functionality - poor. I cannot recommend it.

Stopped working whilst sailing, ended up having to be rescued in French waters... the boat is still out there. I'm from the UK and would like a full refund as this happened whilst being the free trial period. and today is the first time I have internet from a hotel in Belgium as I await my flight home to the UK. then I have to arrange getting my boat back will never use it again.

Do not download or pay for premium! Almost impossible to plan routes with this app, as you'll put in a starting point and an end point, and then it'll take an infinite amount of time calculating the route and very rarely actually completing the route plan. so disappointing as we paid £80 for the premium version of this app, but it really is unusable in its current form.

Just been up to Scottish Islands and app was "So So". Route planning wasn't accurate, kept on dropping out when signal wasn't great. AIS wasn't showing alot of traffic when other apps were working much quicker. Weather wasn't very accurate. Just seemed an OK app but nothing special. For now I'd say its a tool for planning and generally just seeing what's about certain areas. I wouldn't use this for navigation. Perhaps as it updates it may get better features and accuracy.

The canal system near where I live is severly lacking. They are so small i cant use them as a starting point and there are huge lakes between them missing. This makes it impossible to ise the app to navigate to open water. Needs a lot of updating. So dissapointing as the app looks nice and i would like to use. **** Update: 07-22-2025. I had hoped they would update the app to include the full canal system down here. 5 months later no update, still not usable. Uninstalling. What a shame.

I bought the premium subscription. What a total waste of money. This app has more flaws than the empire state. E.g. Planning a route you look at navigable depth - this doesn't do that, you need to consider tidal currents - this thinks the tide is the same whatever the depth. It takes forever to calculate a route, always starting now. When it finally produces and you alter the departure time (you can't set an arrival time) it starts all over again. Not usable for real sailing. Underdeveloped.

Such a promising app, but so unpolished, buggy, and inconsistent. Location gets stuck if you reopen it after a while (it has all the location permissions). Opening points of interest sometimes works, sometimes not. Sometimes it allows you to navigate from your current location, sometimes not. Sometimes your speed is shown in the bottom left, sometimes -- it's not! Depth lines could be more precise. But still fun to use.

Meh... It's the best app I found but I resent the huge price increase to change screen color for night mode. That's kind of a "screw you" to their customers. Data is fair at best. And of course you have to use cell service so you can end up on the rocks real quick if not paying attention. Nothing can be done about that but it is very limiting.

I want to like this app more than I do, however, it's little things that prevent me from doing so. First off is GPS tracking. Most of the time, it doesn't know where I am. Permissions are enabled, and I've dug through app settings, but this is primarily a planning app on my phone. I look at a sister app it works with to find anchorages, sail with an iPhone themed app that actually tracks where I am (with a horrible UI), and check weather with two other iterations of apps. It's so close!

Stopped tracking position. The app shows my speed and direction but the location on screen does not update. The new psuedo 3D mode adds zero value. The UI is not intuitive and the app sets waypoints along the shoreline. I need to save locations, not routes. Many long-term local lakefront businesses are not in the database. On the plus side, when earlier versions worked, it could route me around the Lake of the Ozarks without manually setting waypoints.