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Skippers Log 4+
The logbook for your yacht
Michael Dieter Konz
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- Free
- Offers In-App Purchases
Screenshots
Description
Skippers Log is your digital logbook for your yacht.
Everything you can do in a good old fashioned paper logbook you can do here:
- Create multiple trips for multiple ships
- Record daily navigational data and weather observations
- Include navigational live data from a wireless NMEA server
- Automatic log entries based on the specifications you make (course change, wind change, ...)
- Plot your trip on Apple map or Navionics map (active Navionics subscription required)
- Print your trip with maps as a PDF
- Create crew lists and print them
- AIS targets shown on map (data from AIS receiver required)
- Synchronize between you devices through iCloud
- Display various data fields from NMEA data as overlay on your map
- Fuel, water, cooking gas and outboard fuel consumption can be recorded
- Take and add pictures to any day in the logbook (Premium version only)
- Automatic geotag your position like e.g. "1.6 nm NW of Cape Finisterre"
- Automatic download GMDSS and DWD weather forecasts (Euriope only, premium only)
- Handling daily checklist (premium only)
The free version of this app is limited to 1 ship, 1 trip and 40 manual log entries. Enough for a one or two week charter trip. No NMEA data are processed in the free app.
In app purchase for the premium version and a 14-day free trial of the premium version.
Please note, that the app will principally run on WiFi only iPads, but it is quite limited on these devices. Even if you use NMEA as your location source, automatic logging and track recording will likely reliably only happen while the app is in the foreground. You can still do manual entries, of course. To unleash the full potential you need a device with a gps receiver.
Icons by Icons8
What’s New
Version 1.8.2
- Fixed a crash of the consumptions window in iOS 18.
- Fixed a problem with consumptions not importing correctly
Ratings and Reviews
Very Detailed but with Issues
Even though some features of this app keep annoying me, admittedly I keep coming back to it for two reasons:
1. It is the only logbook app that records the level of details that I require, and
2. The developer provides very good support.
While most other logbook apps basically just record the track of the vessel, this one offers a wide variety of manual and automatic entries to rival the level of detail that you would record in a conventional logbook.
Where the app disappoints is the level of user guidance that we have come to get used to from modern apps.
For example, if you write a detailed entry for 20 minutes, and then click on anything other than “save”, everything you have written is lost without warning.
If the app crashes ― which it does quite frequently when in the background, where I keep it most of the time, because my navigation app runs on the same device ― important details like e.g. engine hours are not updated when the app comes online again. The engine hours are simple enough to update manually, but you have to do that for every entry — manual or automatic — since the crash, which could amount to dozens of entries. How I wish the app would just record the time period and add it to the base value, rather than recording an absolute value every time, so that I only have to fix one entry after a crash for engine hours to be right again, instead of all entries……….(!)
Similar, if you forget to change the status to “moored”, the app will happily keep logging for days, even if you have moved hundreds of miles inland, moved at 70 mph (because you are now driving a car and not a boat), etc. We are used now to apps having a certain amount of intelligence, e.g. my Apple Watch will automatically stop logging a run if I start to move with a speed that is not compatible with running. All of this is aggravated by the fact that the app now of course also still keeps logging engine hours, so you have to delete even hundreds of entries manually. Because I use the engine hour record to decide the maintenance cycle for my engine, I tend to get quite emotional about those bugs.
I guess eventually I will get used to the peculiarities of this app, and how its user interface differs from other iOS apps, but at the moment I am still inclined to see those peculiarities as bugs rather than features.
Developer Response ,
I am sorry that you have problems with the user interface. Manual entries are absolutely no problem, as long as you remember to actually save the entry.
Unfortunately the app has no way to know when you are finished doing your entry, so you have to tell it.
Feel free to contact me if you have suggestions for improvement.
Edit:
Thanks for your detailed feedback. You raise a few good points and I will see what I can do to address them in future versions.
Edit:
The current version 1.6.1 solves a couple of the raised issues, including autosave and automatic mooring
App Privacy
The developer, Michael Dieter Konz, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary based on, for example, the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Provider
- Michael Dieter Konz
- Size
- 91.5 MB
- Category
- Navigation
- Compatibility
-
- iPhone
- Requires iOS 12.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 12.0 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 12.0 or later.
- Languages
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English, German
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Location
- This app may use your location even when it isn’t open, which can decrease battery life.
- Copyright
- © 2020-2024 Michael Konz
- Price
- Free
- In-App Purchases
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- 14-day free trial £0.00
- Unlimited full version £9.99