What changed

1. NewLatest2026-08-22g

   How much water there actually is — and six other things nobody else has

   Sat, Aug 22, 5:20 PM PT

   The big one. The Army Corps surveys these channels and publishes the controlling depth in a plain text file inside every survey. Nobody reads them. We now read all of them, every reach from Southport to Cape Lookout, and tell you what they found and how long ago they found it.

   • ›CONTROLLING DEPTH — 55 reaches with a real surveyed depth. 49 of them are shallower than the depth they are supposed to be maintained at. Shown as a BAND, never a single decimal, because a survey is one day in water that moves — one reach here went from 7 ft to 3 ft in seventy days.
   • ›Survey age sits next to every number, and past a year it refuses to compute at all rather than dress up something stale.
   • ›It also tells you how much of each reach was actually surveyed. ‘1 ft, coverage 6’ means they found a foot and only looked at six per cent — the rest could be worse, not better. That is the opposite of how it reads at a glance.
   • ›TIDAL CURRENT — which way the water is running, and what wind against an ebb is doing to it. Only 3 of our 9 inlets have a NOAA current station; the other six say so rather than borrowing a neighbour’s number. Masonboro is one of the six.
   • ›BRIDGES — every span in the corridor, when it opens, and what it clears. Arrive at the Wrightsville bascule at 10:20 and it now tells you: 40 minute wait, next opening 11:00. The route planner adds that wait to your run.
   • ›Two corrections worth knowing: the Grayden Paul bridge at Beaufort is gone, and Surf City has been a fixed 66 ft span since 2018. Federal regs were only updated this January and most printed guides are still wrong.
   • ›The corridor is not 65 feet. The lowest fixed span is 64 ft at waterway mile 252.3, and the lowest overhead crossing is a power cable at 68 ft that appears in no bridge table anywhere.
   • ›SANDBAR TIMING — what time the bar comes out and what time it goes under, from the real tide curve. Plus the warning that matters: nose onto sand on a falling tide and you are there until tomorrow afternoon.
   • ›VHF POSITION REPORT — the exact sentence to say on channel 16, in the format the Coast Guard expects, in type you can read in sunlight. Works with no signal.
   • ›FLOAT PLAN — a link you send to somebody ashore. It says plainly that it is a note to a person, not a Coast Guard filing, and it has an ‘I’m back safe’ button.
   • ›FIXED: three tide stations in our list — New River Inlet, Ocean City Beach and Wilmington Beach — publish no data at all. Eleven places including Carolina Beach, Snows Cut and the whole Surf City cluster were silently losing their tide panel. They now use a station that answers.
2. New2026-08-22e

   Wave spacing, and what the water is really doing

   Sat, Aug 22, 3:10 PM PT

   Two things a local boater told us we had wrong, both now fixed. The app was judging the sea state on wave HEIGHT alone, and it was quoting tide predictions as if the wind does not exist.

   • ›THREE FEET IS NOT THREE FEET. Three feet at five seconds will stuff a centre console; three feet at eleven seconds is a nap. We already had the wave spacing in our data and were throwing it away. Every verdict in the app now scores wave STEEPNESS, and the app tells you which one you are getting — ‘ 5-second period, wind chop. 1.6 ft at this spacing rides like 2.4 ft.’
   • ›THE ALMANAC DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT THE WIND. A tide prediction is astronomy. Two days of hard northeast and the sounds sit a foot below what was predicted — and a foot is the whole margin a shallow boat has.
   • ›Only three of the fourteen tide stations on this coast physically measure the water; the rest only predict it. We now read those three and show you the difference: right now Beaufort is running 0.4 ft ABOVE prediction because the wind is holding water in.
   • ›When the nearest real gauge is far away, the app says so rather than pretending it measured your basin — and past thirty miles it says nothing at all.
3. Fixed2026-08-22d

   The app was working out your clearance using somebody else’s boat

   Sat, Aug 22, 1:30 PM PT

   A deep competitive review of eighteen boating, aviation and weather apps turned up a serious defect in our own app before it turned up anything about anybody else’s. Every depth clearance, fuel figure and run time the app showed you was calculated for a hard-coded 26 ft boat drawing 1.9 ft — not yours. If you draw four feet, the app was confidently telling you that you had water you did not have. That is the exact mistake this whole app exists to prevent, and it is fixed.

   • ›Your draft, length, cruise speed, fuel burn and home port now flow from your profile into every calculation on every screen.
   • ›Where we do not know something about your boat, the app says so and asks — it no longer fills the gap with a plausible number and presents it as yours.
   • ›Signed out, you get a clearly labelled stand-in boat: ‘a typical 26 ft centre console’. Never described as yours.
   • ›Proof it works: over a spot charted 3 ft with a 2.4 ft tide, a flats skiff now reads 4.5 ft under the keel and a deep-draft trawler reads 0.9 ft and ‘too tight’. Before, both were told the same thing.
4. Fixed2026-08-22c

   Clicked every link in the app and fixed what was broken

   Sat, Aug 22, 10:45 AM PT

   A full sweep: 275 pages checked, every outbound link followed, every map control and filter exercised. Three real problems found and fixed.

   • ›The ‘buy a fishing licence’ link went to a dead page. It now goes to the right one at NC Marine Fisheries.
   • ›The fuel page was loading 463KB on the US‑70 route — because 64 stale entries nobody needs were riding along on every visit. That page gets read on a phone, on a rural highway, towing a boat. It is now 138KB and the old entries load only if you ask for them.
   • ›Checked all three basemaps (nautical chart, dark, satellite) switch properly and switch back — they do.
   • ›Checked the category filters actually filter and the map controls all respond — they do.
5. New2026-08-22b

   Ethanol-free fuel, boat storage, and where you'd actually go if somebody got hurt

   Sat, Aug 22, 9:20 AM PT

   Three things your partner asked for, all built on real sourced data rather than a list somebody typed from memory.

   • ›ETHANOL-FREE FUEL — 168 real E0 pumps on the drive from Raleigh, ordered by mile along I‑40, US‑70 and US‑17 so you can see what is actually on your way. Every one carries the date a real person last confirmed it.
   • ›The most useful number on that page: the longest stretch of road with nothing recently confirmed. On I‑40 it is 79 miles — so it tells you to top off at Wilson’s Store before you commit to it.
   • ›Marina fuel is listed separately, and only the docks whose own notes say ethanol-free are marked confirmed. The rest say ‘likely’, because expecting is not knowing.
   • ›BOAT STORAGE — 36 facilities split into the four products people confuse: dry stack, wet slip, trailer yard and covered. Two operators publish dry stack in their own words (Morningstar Southport, enclosed to 28 ft, and Masonboro Yacht Club, 22–28 ft).
   • ›Not one marina on this coast publishes a rate. Rather than print a plausible number we left every price blank and wrote the six questions worth asking when you ring instead.
   • ›IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG — not a list of hospitals, which is useless on a boat. It answers the real question: which ramp or dock do you run to, and what is on shore when you get there.
   • ›7 confirmed emergency departments. Two behavioural-health hospitals and an orthopaedic-only one were deliberately left out — OpenStreetMap tags them as hospitals and sending somebody there would be a genuine harm.
   • ›Camp Lejeune’s hospital is the closest ER to Swansboro and is never offered as your nearest, because a civilian turned away at a gate has lost the time that mattered.
   • ›VHF 16 is at the top of that page, with the plain reason it beats a phone offshore: the radio is heard by every boat within range at once, and those boats reach you first.
6. New2026-08-22a

   What’s biting — driven by the actual water temperature

   Sat, Aug 22, 8:35 AM PT

   The app already knew the water was 85°F because a buoy off Masonboro measured it an hour ago. It said nothing about what that means. Now there is a screen that ranks what is running by the month AND the measured temperature, with North Carolina’s current size and bag limits beside every single species.

   • ›Ranked live: at 85°F in August it puts tarpon, Spanish and blue crab at the top and explains why for each one
   • ›The law sits ABOVE the fishing advice on every card, deliberately — flounder are thick right now and it is illegal to keep one, and you cannot read past that
   • ›Flounder season this year is Sept 1–14 only, one fish, 15 inches. Closed every other day of the year.
   • ›Every limit is copied from the NC Division of Marine Fisheries table effective July 1, with the date it was checked and a link to confirm
   • ›Species set by proclamation (cobia, snapper-grouper, sharks) say so and link out instead of guessing a number
   • ›Filter by where you are fishing — inshore, inlets, structure, surf, nearshore, offshore
   • ›Place pages now carry a short version, so a sandbar tells you what is worth casting at while you are standing on it
7. New2026-08-21w

   Add it to your home screen, and one notification a week

   Fri, Aug 21, 8:40 PM PT

   The app now installs to your phone’s home screen like a real app — no app store, just an icon. And there is exactly one notification: Friday morning, telling you what Saturday actually looks like on your water.

   • ›Add to home screen, with proper instructions for iPhone (Share → Add to Home Screen) since Apple does not allow the automatic prompt
   • ›Works offline for the chart and the places. Live conditions never come from a cache — if you are offline, a red banner says so rather than showing you Tuesday’s flat seas on a rough Saturday
   • ›Weekend outlook notification, opt-in from Profile. Real example from this week’s data: “Saturday looks good, storms around — 4–10 kt SSW, seas under 2 ft, storms 50%.”
   • ›It only sends when there is real forecast data behind a specific sentence. A quiet week is a quiet phone. No streaks, no ‘we miss you’, no marketing — ever.
8. New2026-08-21v

   The week ahead, the inlet board, and 31 more places

   Fri, Aug 21, 7:55 PM PT

   Three big additions. There is now a screen that answers “when should I go?” instead of only “what is it doing right now” — eight days, each one scored on the water with the best window on it. There is a board showing how old the survey is behind every inlet. And the chart went from 65 places to 96.

   • ›The week ahead: eight days for any town on the corridor, each with wind, seas, the best window to go, and a plain sentence about it. Reachable from Weather and from the map header.
   • ›Storms are now judged separately from the water. A 7-knot day with afternoon thunderstorms used to be labelled “rough”, which was wrong — it is a flat-water morning, and the app now says so and tells you when the sky turns.
   • ›Inlets & channels: days since the Army Corps last surveyed each inlet. Masonboro has not been surveyed in 1,453 days. Carolina Beach was surveyed 10 days ago. Nobody else shows you this.
   • ›It also flags the trap that only 3 of 9 inlets have a gauge actually measuring water — stations named ‘Bogue Inlet’ and ‘New River Inlet’ show on a plotter with nothing behind them.
   • ›Every buoy moved in the last twelve months, with dates. Bogue Inlet had 7 markers moved on a single day in May.
   • ›31 more marinas, ramps and boatyards imported from OpenStreetMap. Only the named ones — 205 unnamed ‘Boat ramp’ pins were deliberately left out.
   • ›Saved places now show today’s seas and wind and the last depth anyone reported, so the Profile tab is worth opening.
   • ›Membership moved to annual — $39 a year instead of $7.99 a month. Boating runs April to October and nobody should pay through a winter they are not on the water.
9. New2026-08-21u

   The map screen does a lot more now

   Fri, Aug 21, 7:55 PM PT

   The map no longer hides everything behind buttons. A list of what is near you now sits on screen at rest, and the controls moved into a proper rail down the side instead of floating loose over the water.

   • ›Nearby list showing the closest places with distance and compass bearing, updating as you move the map
   • ›Search and category chips — fuel, dock & dine, ramps, sandbars, anchorages, marinas, hazards
   • ›Show my location, with a boat marker that points the way you are actually heading when the phone reports a course
   • ›Measure tool: tap two points for distance and bearing, including the course back
   • ›A legend explaining what the pin colours and shapes mean
10. Fixed2026-08-21t

    Place pages rebuilt, and a daylight bug that mattered

    Fri, Aug 21, 7:35 PM PT

    Tapping a place now gives you the whole picture instead of a summary: a nautical chart of the spot, live wind and seas with the station that measured them, today's tide curve, what it costs in fuel and time from your boat, and the nearest fuel, ramp, dock and reef with distance and bearing.

    • ›Fixed a real bug: after about 8pm the app was reading tomorrow's sunset, so it told you there were 23 hours of daylight left when it was already dark. It now correctly says the sun is down.
    • ›Every conditions figure says whether a buoy measured it or a forecaster predicted it, and how old it is
    • ›Vote scores and comment counts no longer show a bare zero on places nobody has posted about yet
11. New2026-08-21s

    Gear lists, route map, and this Updates tab

    Fri, Aug 21, 7:05 PM PT

    Six gear lists covering a sandbar day, inshore fishing, bottom fishing the reefs, king mackerel, mahi and bluefish/Spanish. Every item is drawn so you can recognise it on the shelf, with one-tap searches on Amazon, Walmart and Bass Pro. The route planner now draws your passage on a nautical chart, colour-coded by how rough each stretch will be when you actually get there.

    • ›Gear lists reachable from Explore
    • ›Legally required items flagged separately — bottom fishing needs a descending device, dehooking tool and non-stainless circle hooks
    • ›Route map shows where the roughest part of the run falls
    • ›This tab, so you can both see what changed
12. New2026-08-21r

    Route planner draws the passage

    Fri, Aug 21, 6:47 PM PT

    The route now appears on a chart with your start and destination pinned, each leg coloured by conditions, and a warning marker on the roughest stretch.

13. Fixed2026-08-21q

    Wind and wave overlay now draws on the map

    Fri, Aug 21, 6:11 PM PT

    The forecast field over the map was loading its data but painting nothing. The cause was in the mapping library — it schedules drawing on an animation frame, and if that frame never arrives the drawing is silently dropped forever. The overlay now draws itself directly, so it works even on a slow phone or a backgrounded tab.

14. New2026-08-21p

    Route planner

    Fri, Aug 21, 5:59 PM PT

    Where's your boat, where do you want to go, where do you want to tie up — and what the weather does along the way. Each leg of the run gets the forecast for the time you'll actually be there, because a long run doesn't happen in one set of conditions.

    • ›Live position with optional continuous tracking
    • ›Pick a docking spot near your destination
    • ›Drag the departure time forward 48 hours and watch the whole run recompute
    • ›The verdict comes from the worst leg, not the average
15. New data2026-08-21m

    Artificial reefs

    Fri, Aug 21, 5:43 PM PT

    29 North Carolina artificial reefs from the state's own Marine Fisheries data — 25 ocean reefs in Onslow Bay plus 4 estuarine, including the New River. Reef number, depth, material and year, with a toggle in Map layers.

16. New data2026-08-21l

    Dock-and-dine restaurants, and Explore rebuilt

    Fri, Aug 21, 5:31 PM PT

    Restaurants across Swansboro, Wilmington and Jacksonville, each tagged with how you actually reach it: a dock at the restaurant, a marina next door, a public dock you walk from, or waterfront with no confirmed docking. Explore cards now lead with a real nautical chart of the destination.

    • ›The Ice House in Swansboro has closed — it's been replaced with Boro Low Country Kitchen at that dock
    • ›The Landing at New River is flagged as requiring base access
    • ›Nothing is promised as dock-and-dine unless it genuinely is
17. New2026-08-21j

    Real nautical charts on the map

    Fri, Aug 21, 5:15 PM PT

    The map now has an actual NOAA chart option — depth soundings, contours, channel edges, buoys and lights. Plus a live conditions strip across the top so you can see whether it's worth going before you touch anything.

18. New2026-08-21h

    48-hour weather timeline you can drag

    Fri, Aug 21, 5:03 PM PT

    Drag across the next two days and watch the seas, wind and verdict change hour by hour. It also finds and highlights the best window to go.

19. New2026-08-21f

    Weather tab

    Fri, Aug 21, 4:34 PM PT

    Marine forecasts in knots and feet — not the land forecast. Observed conditions from real buoys, tide curves, and a plain-English call on whether to go.

20. New data2026-08-21e

    The Intracoastal Waterway channel

    Fri, Aug 21, 4:30 PM PT

    The federal channel centreline and mile markers, from Army Corps survey data. Covers mile 204 to 308 — Beaufort down to Southport.

21. Foundation2026-08-21d

    Real accounts, and all the fake data deleted

    Fri, Aug 21, 4:25 PM PT

    Sign up, log in, pick a username, reset your password. Post comments, vote spots up or down, drop your own pins on the map. Every piece of made-up sample data was removed at the same time — no invented reports, no fake reviews, no imaginary members.

    • ›Depth reports get corrected for the tide automatically
    • ›Where nothing has been posted yet, the app says so instead of inventing activity
22. Foundation2026-08-21b

    Tide-corrected depth reports

    Fri, Aug 21, 3:31 PM PT

    The feature the whole app is built around. Post what your sounder read, and we look up what the tide was doing at that exact moment and correct it. The same 4.1 ft reading means very different things at high water and low — now everyone sees the number that actually compares.

This tab is temporary — it is here so you can both track progress while the app is being built out. The build stamp above matches the one at the bottom of Profile, so you can always tell whether what you are looking at is the latest.