Boat Maps: Amsterdam Canals

Nine Knots

In-app purchases

About this app

Boat Maps is canal navigation for Amsterdam, built for small boats. It routes you over real waterways instead of roads, so every route follows a canal you can actually sail and every turn is one your boat can make.

Whether you own a sloep and know the city from the water, or you have rented one for the afternoon and are still working out which gracht leads where, Boat Maps is the map that answers it.

WATERWAY ROUTING, NOT ROAD ROUTING
Set a destination and Boat Maps plans the route across Amsterdam's canal network. Routing runs on your phone, so it keeps working under a bridge or out on the IJ where the signal drops. Arrival times assume a realistic 6 km/h — the speed a sloep actually makes on the grachten, not a car's idea of it.

ROUTES THAT RESPECT YOUR BOAT
Enter your boat's height, draught and length once. From then on:
• bridges too low for your boat are routed around
• canals too shallow for your draught are left out
• boats of 10 metres and over are kept out of the grachtengordel, where they may not go

BRIDGE CLEARANCES FROM RIJKSWATERSTAAT
Boat Maps carries the published clearance for 432 bridges in and around Amsterdam, 419 of them with an official height, straight from Rijkswaterstaat's fairway information service. Every bridge is coloured on the map against your own boat, so a bridge you fit under and a bridge you do not are one glance apart. Arch bridges are listed at their lowest point rather than the crest, because the edge is where you hit.

Clearances are published for the kept canal level. Heavy rain can lift the water 10 to 20 cm, and 13 bridges in the area publish no clearance at all — so look up before you go under.

EVERYTHING ALONG THE WATER
Restaurants with their own mooring, jetties, public toilets, drinking water and charging points, all on the map. Every spot has a chat thread, so skippers can tell each other whether the charger works and whether there is room to tie up.

A LOGBOOK THAT WRITES ITSELF
Trips are recorded while the app is open and stay on your phone. Distance, duration, the track you sailed and the landmarks you passed, kept without you touching anything.

SCENIC TOURS WITH STORIES
21 stories along the canals, in Dutch and English, each starting by itself as you come near. Put the phone down, steer, and let Amsterdam explain itself. The first 30 minutes are free.

LIVE VESSELS ON THE MAP
See the canal cruisers, workboats and police boats moving around you. It earns its keep on the IJ and the Amstel, where traffic is heavy and the big ships have right of way.

Tours and live vessels are one purchase, once. No subscription.

Privacy policy: https://nickleenders.github.io/boat-maps-privacy-policy/privacy