Routes

A route is an ordered list of waypoints. You plan it in advance, then follow it leg by leg with live steering guidance.

Creating a route

Two ways to start:

• From the chart — right-click / long-press where the route should begin and choose Route from here.
• From the Routes panel — open Routes (RTE), then tap New.

Either way you're now in edit mode: each tap on the chart appends a waypoint. Waypoints are auto-named after nearby charted features (buoys, lights, points) when there's one close by, so a route reads like "Castle Is. → President Roads → Deer Is." without any typing. A dashed preview line follows the cursor to the next tap.

Tap Done to save, or Cancel to discard. Route names default to something sensible; double-click the name (in the Routes panel or the route's own panel) to rename.

Editing a route

Open Routes, and tap the pencil (Edit) on the route's row. The editing toolbar appears at the top, and the route's waypoint list stays open alongside so you can work by name or by chart:

While editing:

• Add — turn on Add Points in the toolbar, then tap open water to append a waypoint at the end. It's lit while it's on. A route you're drawing starts with it on; an existing route opens with it off, so a mis-aimed tap can't hang a stray waypoint off the end.
• Move — drag any waypoint.
• Insert — ghost markers appear at each leg's midpoint, plus one just off each end of the route. Tap one to drop a waypoint there, or drag it straight to where you want the waypoint — the point is created and follows your finger in one motion. The end markers extend the route, before the first waypoint or after the last.
• Select — tap a waypoint (on the chart or in the list) to select it. The toolbar shows its name and leg data, plus Delete and Insert After buttons.
• Rename — double-click a waypoint's name in the list.
• Undo — the Undo button (or Ctrl/Cmd-Z) steps back through your edits.

Done saves; Cancel abandons all changes from this session.

Snapping to existing waypoints

While placing or dragging a waypoint, moving close to an existing one — a standalone waypoint, or a waypoint of another visible route — snaps it to exactly that position; a ring marks the target before you commit. This is how you build several routes that share a common stretch (say, the passage out of your home harbor) without near-duplicate lines cluttering the chart: identical positions render as one line and one marker.

Snapped waypoints are copies, not links — moving one later never affects other routes. The snap range is small and screen-based, so if it grabs a point you didn't want, just zoom in and place again; hiding a route also removes its waypoints as snap targets. A new waypoint can snap onto the route's own starting point, which is the easy way to close a loop that brings you home.

The Routes panel

Selecting a route in the Routes panel opens its detail panel: the full waypoint list with each leg's bearing, distance, and cumulative distance — a passage plan you can read off directly. The summary at the bottom zooms the chart to the whole route.

Per-route actions: navigate, preview (opens the route in the Track Viewer, where a planning speed gives you time estimates along it), export GPX, edit, show/hide on the chart, and delete.

Organizing with folders

Once you have more than a handful of routes, put them in folders. Select a route and use the dropdown at the bottom of its detail panel — pick an existing folder or New folder… to create one:

In the Routes panel, foldered routes group under collapsible headers with a route count — tap a header to expand or collapse it (the panel remembers which folders you keep closed). The eye button on a folder header shows or hides every route in it at once, so you can keep last summer's cruise legs filed away and invisible while today's routes stay on the chart. A route with no folder simply lists at the top.

Export and import (GPX)

The panel header's import/export buttons read and write standard GPX files, and each route row can be exported individually. Two reasons to use them:

• Backup — routes live in the app's local storage on that device. Export All every so often and you can't lose a season's planning to a lost phone or a cleared browser.
• Moving between devices — there's no cloud sync (by design; it works offline). The comfortable workflow is to plan routes on a desktop with a big screen and mouse, export — Export All, or a single route's own export button — then import the file on the phone or tablet you navigate with. GPX is the standard interchange format, so the same files also move routes to and from other chartplotters and apps.

Following a route

Tap the arrow (Navigate route) on a route's row or detail panel. The instrument panel grows a navigation section, and the chart highlights the active leg:

• Next — the waypoint you're steering for.
• DTW — distance to that waypoint.
• BRG — bearing to it, magnetic or true per your settings.
• VMG — your speed toward the waypoint; if it goes negative you're sailing away from it.
• STR — steer indicator: how far and which way to turn to point at the waypoint (0° means dead ahead; ←15° means come left fifteen degrees).

When you arrive at a waypoint (within the arrival radius of 0.1 NM), navigation advances to the next leg automatically. To start from a different leg — say you're joining a route halfway — open the route's detail panel and tap the ► marker on the leg you want.

Stop navigating with the Cancel navigation button that appears at the bottom-left of the chart, the route's stop button, or the Escape key.

You can also navigate directly to a single waypoint without a route: open Waypoints and tap Navigate to on any waypoint, or drop one from the chart's context menu first. The same navigation instruments apply.