The blog
Miscellaneous Utility Applications
[January update 2025] This great app, not updated for several years, no longer works and has been removed from the Apple Store. It's a shame because I had made the French version. A similar alternative could be Celestial Nav whose latest version 3.3 September date 2025, at the price of €30 for the PRO lifetime license. Compatible iOS 26.
`I haven't had the chance to test it yet.
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First appeared at the end of June 2023, l’application Bloc Marine, edited by Weather Consult / Le Figaro Nautique, has replaced the Guide Escales (¹), previously removed from the Apple Store. This latest application was far from unanimously accepted following a catastrophic pricing policy over successive updates. (²). Read more …
Boaters and water sports enthusiasts now have two applications helping them to better understand and protect the increasingly fragile marine environment.. Nav&Co is an initiative 100% public composed of SHOM, of the OFB (French Office for Biodiversity), of the State Secretariat for the Sea and DGAMPA, with co-financing from the European Union. DONIA (*) is a private initiative of the company Andromeda Oceanology which received the support of the Rhône-Mediterranean-Corsica Water Agency. If DONIA is dedicated mainly to the western Mediterranean basin, Nav&Co currently covers all metropolitan France, Corsica and Guadeloupe. Read more …
Boaters and water sports enthusiasts now have two applications helping them to better understand and protect the increasingly fragile marine environment.. DONIA is a private initiative of the company Andromeda Oceanology which received the support of the Rhône-Mediterranean-Corsica Water Agency. Nav&Co (*) is an initiative 100% public composed of SHOM, of the OFB (French Office for Biodiversity), of the State Secretariat for the Sea and DGAMPA, with co-financing from the European Union. If DONIA is dedicated mainly to the western Mediterranean basin, Nav&Co currently covers all metropolitan France, Corsica and Guadeloupe. Read more …
More and more of you have adopted the Iridium GO! for its easy way to request GRIB files, directly from Weather4D and some other applications. But some also want to transfer these files to a PC to import them into Windows software. (as you know, no one is perfect !). An easy solution is available : the messaging app Air Share, compatible iOS/iPadOS (¹). [Update 30 th 2022] Warning : the application has changed its identifier code on the AppStore. Read more …
It saddens me to end the year with a critical article, but the subject deserves it. I wrote in December 2016 (*) a sincerely positive appreciation of the evolution of the application Guides Escales 2017 - Bloc Marine digital version by Figaro Nautisme editions - compared to 2016. But for edition 2018, is unfortunately go back, supply regress and severe rate increase.
Unlike the print edition you can keep several years in your boat library, the annual update of the application Guides Escales clears all purchased regions the previous year. It is therefore not a purchase but an annual subscription, nuance!. And that's not all…
[Update 2022] The Escales Guide has been withdrawn from sale.
Our friend Guillaume Bolo, the first in France to have offered for many years a very elaborate web interface presenting SHOM predictions – tide.info – is also the developer of the excellent app marée info for iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch. Copied but never equaled by SHOM itself, who ended up giving up, he will soon offer us a superb evolution… Read more …
I have mentioned last July the "Stopovers" Guide, digital version of Bloc Marine published by the Figaro Group. It seems that the remarks I made on the excessively fragmented division of these guides were heard : The version 2017 has the number of modules reduced by 17 down to 12 for the Channel-Atlantic coast, and 13 down to 10 for the Mediterranean. It is a welcome initiative !
At the beginning of this year I wrote the greatest good I thought of the Digital Almanac, the digitized version of Reed’s Nautical Almanac. The Figaro group, Publisher of the website www.figaronautisme.fr, owner of Météo-Consult / The Weather Channel and Logbook – Marine Block, Published since the end 2014 "Stopover Guides", the digitized version of the Marine Block on the iBook Store. Read more …
In recent years, French startups have flourished in the world of recreational boating. Their common denominator is to use digital technology to implement an idea which intends to provide a unique service to boaters.. How many will survive ? Hard to say, but they all have the merit of dusting off dad's boating by addressing the younger generation of water sports enthusiasts.. Community sharing of information, co-location, « bla-bla-boat », so many responses to new attitudes in the practice of pleasure boating.
Among them, one particularly appealed to me, Deviated.