With an old Raymarine e80 and no real excuse to invest in a Garmin InReach or a Spot satellite tracker, it has always been a challenge to get tracks of our trips in a format I can share. And I like to share. I have previously documented my boat tracking attempts on my personal blog (here and here) but I don’t think I ever summarized the Google Maps procedure I now use. It’s a lot of work and very convoluted, but I do find going through it is a good way to summarize the trips in my head after I get back home and I always get some enjoyment from bending technology to my will 🙂 Your mileage may vary.
Recording the Tracks
While cruising we start a new track each day using Navionics on the iPad. It’s a first gen and is occasionally cranky, but it lives below plugged in to the usb charger and is generally happy enough to do this one simple job. It also syncs the tracks via wifi to my much more modern iPhone 7, so I can work with them later from both places.
iPad: Navionics v4.7.2 (this is an ancient iPhone version)
iPhone: Navionics US & Canada v11.1
Then when we get home (or I have some leisure time to screw around with computers) I start working on consolidating the tracks and posting them online.
The Procedure
1 — The first job is to get the pesky KMLs in the first place. Right now the easiest way is to email them from the app to myself. Here’s what that looks like:
