Route Explorer: everything along your route, at a glance

Route Explorer pulls together everything worth knowing about your route or track before and during a trip: distances, estimated arrival times, hazards, bridges, fuel prices, and more, all in one place. For a deeper dive into how it handles bridge timing specifically, Bob423 (Robert Sherer) wrote an excellent breakdown in this article, worth a read if bridges are a regular part of your cruising.

Route Explorer requires an active Advanced Tools subscription.

What Route Explorer calculates

Draw a new route, or select an existing route or track, and Route Explorer automatically works out:

• alerts and hazards, sourced from Waterway Guide and ActiveCaptain, near your route or track.
• warnings and hazards calculated by Route Planner along your route. This extra layer of detail only applies to routes, not tracks.
• bridges and locks intersecting your path, flagging which ones could be a problem for your specific boat.
• anchorages, from ActiveCaptain and Waterway Guide, along the way.
• fuel stations carrying your selected fuel type, with prices shown where available and the cheapest option highlighted.
• marinas, from ActiveCaptain and Waterway Guide, along your route or track.
• the weather forecast for your route or track.

All of this is calculated using the details you've entered on the My Boat page, your boat's beam and height for flagging dangerous bridges, and your chosen fuel type for filtering marinas. Getting those details right on My Boat first is what makes Route Explorer's output actually useful.

The Route Explorer info page

Open the info page for any route or track, and you'll see a summary row covering hazards and alerts, bridges and locks, and fuel stations matching the fuel type you selected on My Boat.

Tap the info button , and you'll get the full detailed list.

Each row in that list shows an icon for the object type, its ETA, its distance from your current GPS position, and a short description. The marina with the lowest fuel price, when applicable, is highlighted so it stands out.

If you're not actively navigating the route or track, and you haven't set a simulated start time within the next 24 hours, distances are measured from the starting point instead, and you'll see elapsed time rather than an ETA. Tap the info button on any row for full details, or tap the description itself to close the list and center the map on that object.

The Preferences panel

At the top of the info page, the Preferences panel lets you configure exactly what Route Explorer calculates. The first section controls which object types get included, which also affects what shows up in the Route Explorer boxes while you're actively navigating.

If you're viewing a track that isn't currently active (not being navigated or recorded), you'll also see an option to choose which speed to use for time calculations.

And for any inactive route or track, you can set a simulated start time, which is also what unlocks the weather forecast information for that route or track.

Highlighting specific objects

Want to keep an eye on one particular bridge, hazard, or marina? Swipe left on its row in the Route Explorer list and select "Highlight."

Swipe again to remove it.

Highlighted objects get their own dedicated info box on the map, showing distance and ETA for the next one in sequence, handy when there's one specific thing along your route you want to track closely. One limitation to know: for tracks, waypoints can't be highlighted, since they're simulated rather than real waypoints.

Setting a new starting point

This one's iOS only. For any route or track that isn't currently active, you can swipe on a waypoint to set it as a new simulated starting point, and swipe again to reset it.

Once set, every calculated figure, distance, fuel, ETAs, gets recalculated relative to that new starting point instead of the route or track as a whole.

Info boxes while navigating

While you're actively navigating a route or track, two additional info boxes appear alongside the standard one:

• highlighted objects, showing the next highlighted item along your route, with distance and ETA;
• Route Explorer info, showing the next hazard or alert, marina, and bridge or lock, each with distance and ETA.

On a tablet, all three boxes display at once, side by side.

On a phone, they alternate one at a time, and you can either let them cycle automatically or lock one in place using the loop button .

Route Explorer settings

You'll find Route Explorer settings from the main Settings page.

From here, "Show info during navigation" toggles whether the special Route Explorer boxes overlay the map while you're navigating.

You can also set the maximum search distance for each category: hazards and alerts, anchorages, marinas with fuel, and marinas without fuel, giving you control over how far ahead Route Explorer looks for each type of object.

Want to see it in action?

For a full walkthrough of Route Explorer, check out our video tutorial.