If you plan the passage at the dock the night before and want the whole route and the water around it on one screen, Helm runs natively on iPad. It is the same chart engine, the same four depth sources and the same draft-aware routing as the iPhone app, laid out for a display with room to work.
Helm is a native iPad app with its own layout. The chart is drawn at the size of the display, so depth shading, buoys, channel edges and the shape of a shoreline all stay legible while you work across a whole stretch of water at once.
Open tomorrow's bay on the iPad and you take in the bend you will be running, the shoal just past it, the two inlets you could duck into if the wind gets up, and the marina you are aiming for, with the depth shading readable across all of it. The pinch points on the run become something you study on Friday night at the kitchen table, with time to change the plan.
Friday evening, the boat is on the lift, and tomorrow is a sandbar you have never run to. Enter your draft once and it becomes part of the chart: Helm shades the water you cannot cross and plans the route around it instead of drawing a straight line through a two-foot shoal. Scrub the time forward to ten in the morning and the tidal current arrows rotate to match, so you can see how the cut you were planning to take runs at that hour.
Draw a line anywhere on the chart and Helm returns distance, bearing and a depth profile along it, including where the shallowest point falls. On the iPad the profile is large enough to read the shape of the bottom along the line, so cutting a corner becomes a number you looked at before you left.
Animated wind, wave and current overlays run on the chart itself. A multi-day strip gives you three-hour columns for wind, gusts, air temperature, rain and water temperature, so you can walk Saturday forward hour by hour and pick the window you want to leave in. Scrub to that hour on the chart and the current arrows turn to match it.
Most boaters end up using both, and Helm is built for that split. Routes, markers, tracks and the logbook sync across your devices, so the passage you built on the tablet at the kitchen table is already on the phone when you step aboard.
| Device | Where it earns its keep |
|---|---|
| iPad | Planning the route, running the measure tool, reading the weather strip, reviewing a recorded trip in the logbook, and carrying the chart at the helm on a screen you can read from the wheel. |
| iPhone | In your pocket on the way to the ramp, on the console underway, and running the anchor alarm overnight. |
Helm also has a CarPlay interface, so the chart appears on the vehicle's built-in screen on the tow down to the ramp.
Helm ships 161 downloadable chart packs. Download the ones covering the water you actually run, and the charts, the depth readings, draft-aware routing, the measure tool and the anchor alarm all keep working with no connection at all. That matters most on a Wi-Fi-only iPad: once the pack is on the device, the tablet holds the chart at the launch ramp, in the marina and ten miles offshore.
The numbers on the iPad chart come from four sources merged together: NOAA electronic navigational charts, USACE eHydro dredging surveys, state lake elevation data, and the live tide from NOAA CO-OPS. Helm reports what is under the keel now, and it surfaces CATZOC, the chart's own confidence rating, so you can see how the survey behind a stretch of water is graded. Lake depth comes from state elevation surveys, so inland water carries depth shading on the tablet the same way the coast does.
Bracket the iPad where you can see it and the underway strip gives you depth, speed over ground and course over ground in one row. Live vessel traffic draws on the same chart through AIS: each contact shows its position, its vessel type and its movement status, so an anchored tanker reads differently from one under way, and the area you are looking at refreshes about every ten seconds. Satellite and night chart styles are there for a run home after dark. Every trip records to a logbook you can replay afterward, which on a big screen is how you find the exact line you took into a creek that worked last August.
Save spots, read the depth contours around them, and get back to the same place later from your recorded trips. On the iPad you see the whole hump and the drop-off either side of it at once instead of panning across it.
Native. Helm has its own iPad layout and runs the chart at the size of the display, with the same chart engine and depth data as the iPhone app.
Yes. Download the chart packs for your area first, and the chart, the depth data, draft-aware routing, the measure tool and the anchor alarm all work with no connection. Routes, markers and tracks sync across to your iPhone as well.
Yes. Routes, markers and saved spots sync between devices, so a passage planned on the tablet is on the phone at the dock.
Yes. Helm imports GPX, so waypoints, routes and tracks from another app or a plotter come across.
Yes. Official NOAA electronic navigational charts, with satellite imagery and a night palette as alternative styles, and the same depth merged from NOAA ENC, USACE eHydro, state lake elevation data and the live tide.
Yes. Set a radius and it wakes you if you drag. It runs on GPS, so it keeps watch with the chart pack downloaded and no cell service.
Helm Boating