Anchor Pro 4+

Almost perfect

Anchor Pro is ALMOST perfect. Being able to point towards your anchor rode and get bearing and being able to input chain length is absolutely fantastic. Having the ability to communicate back to me when I’m away, is absolutely game changing. Yes, it does require the device you leave to have a SIM and data … but isnt your peace of mind worth it? The app is fabulous. I only find ONE PROBLEM: my ipad sometimes looses GPS accuracy. It goes to 726 ft or 1100 something ft. For some time. I would love to be able to set a treshold of getting back to 16ft or similar GPS accuracy. If the accuracy drops, it usually does to absurd levels, like >100ft. There is no point in sounding an alarm for that, it’s just inaccurate. This is the only thing missing on this fantastic app.

Solid app , a few suggestions

The app does what it’s designed for and does it well. I used it in 14-18mph winds and a high tidal flow area so the boat had a 180 degree swing. As I monitored our position on multiple devices this app was relatively accurate ( iOS gps accuracy could be better) . The interface is very intuitive and straight forward. All in all great job sloth

Suggestions : 1-provide an icon to increase / decrease radius or maybe allow user to drop anchor and then have a settling period where you monitor the speed and drift to determine anchor heading along with rode deployed
2- allow anchor review input , maybe ask for specific info like protection , bottom holding , need wash down , etc and link to active captain account to feed reviews. You could also pull anchorage info from AC and provide a richer Experince to users
3- with tracking of boat movement allow changing the track color , the current color is hard to see in certain lighting
4- Scan WiFi connection for nema2000 GPS and allow to switch to it as primary GPS for higher accuracy. Maybe even have redundancy and intelligence to validate on device against another ( I have two GPS on the boat , one for ais, one for navigation + the iOS device )

—————update—————
Thanks for contacting me ... look forward to seeing the enhancements

Developer Response ,

Dear user, thank you for a really helpful review! I will note the suggestions and try to include them in the next versions of the application.

Mooring movement

I have been on a mooring in Catalina which has bow and stern pickups so needless to say the boat stays in one place. I set my alarm with a 60 foot radius. The alarm went off three times during the night and we had not moved. It seems the accuracy of the gps is not very precise compared to other devices. This needs to be taken into account when setting distance. Due to this you will need to set your radius further than most would like diminishing the whole premise of the app. ALSO the feature in which you can reset the position of the anchor by dragging it on the map (which is a great idea) does not work on my devise which is an iPhone. Otherwise I think the ease of use and design is great.