OnCourse - boating & sailing

MarineTraffic

In-app purchases

About this app

Improve your experience at sea with OnCourse, the new boating and sailing navigation aid from MarineTraffic, the global leader in vessel tracking.
OnCourse helps you stay aware of the traffic around you, plan your voyages, while sharing your position with your friends and loved ones through the MarineTraffic Live Map. Also, you can engage with the boaters’ community and have fun with the new exciting Virtual Reality feature.

Increase your awareness while sailing
- Plan and monitor your voyage*
- Calculate the optimal route*
- Add your own customisable waypoints to the map
- Collision detection & avoidance while sailing, with AIS
- Additional information during sailing (time to next waypoint, next ETA, final ETA, distance & bearing to waypoint)

Share your position on MarineTraffic.com and engage with the boaters’ community
- Report your own position even if your boat is not equipped with an AIS transponder, so that your friends and family can follow you in near real-time
- Track a particular boat in a race or keep in touch with friends’ boats whilst cruising
- Identify other vessels that are sailing in the area (provided that they transmit their positions)
- Upload photos of your boat for all the community to see

Have fun!
- Recognise vessels by using the Augmented Reality tool*
- Try out the new Virtual Reality feature and watch everything from a different perspective (requires a VR headset)*

Very low data and battery consumption
All standard units of measurement supported

(*) Available only with OnCourse Plus subscriptions

Note: OnCourse is not AIS, OnCourse simulates the data transmitted by AIS transponders; however, it only transmits data through the Internet and not over AIS radio-frequencies. The information transmitted by OnCourse is not visible by the AIS receivers of other vessels. It will only be displayed on the MarineTraffic website and apps. As such, OnCourse is a self-reporting tool that does not substitute AIS transmissions and it is not, by any means, related to the safety and navigation equipment of a vessel.

Intended use
Provided that Internet connectivity is available, the vessel's positions will start being reported once the OnCourse application is launched on your mobile device. Note that the positions will continue being reported even if the app is running in the background! It is important to be used only when the device is on board a vessel and it must be turned off whenever the device leaves the vessel!

How to use OnCourse - Registration Required
Registration for a MarineTraffic account is required in order to start reporting your position through the application. The details of the vessel (such as vessel's name, call-sign, dimensions, destination, ETA, etc) must be also configured when using the app.

Email notifications
In order to avoid unwanted position reporting, MarineTraffic will send e-mail notifications at your registered email address, whenever your app is active. This serves as a reminder that position reporting should only be active when you are at sea and must be turned off when on land.

Disclaimer
This application is to be used for informational reasons and as navigation assistance. This is not a substitute for the good seamanship practices, the onboard navigation and safety instruments required by applicable regulations.

Continued use of GPS running in the background can decrease battery life.

Ratings and reviews

Has been working great for 2 years, but has stopped reporting position to marinetraffic servers for the last 4 weeks. What is the issue? When will this be fixed? Do not bother installing this app, there are major issues as ot does no longer report your position to marine traffic servers, and there is no support or response from the developers to fix this major issue. Very poor support, i have emailed several times and get no response from the developers

Not possible to report position in the background. I tried setting the android permission to allow background activity, but this does not have an effect. You must have the app in the foreground, which is unfortunate if you want to use it for anything else while sailing.

The app cannot record an arrival in 2021 (the arrival date only goes up to 31 Dec 2020), so the app's as useful as a chocolate teapot. It also keeps asking me to enable location services for the app, even though these are already enabled, so I don't think it can even report our position!

What's new

Security fixes and improvements