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Introducing Logbook
February 3, 2024 • 3 min read
A better way to review, relive, and remember your trips.
Logbooks and journals have been incredibly important tools for navigation since the dawn of marine navigation. Explorers used logbooks to journal their discoveries and experiences navigating uncharted waters, shaping trade routes and international commerce.
Even today, commercial vessels are still obliged to maintain a logbook. While recreational boaters are free from that mandate, keeping track of where and how you have traveled can be both a valuable and fun way to remember your past trips.
This week's update introduces Logbook, a new way to review, relive, and remember your trips. Logbook is a complete replacement for the Trips experience in Orca.
The Orca Logbook
Logbook runs on the Orca Core. It automatically collects data about your boat and devices connected via your NMEA network. The data is uploaded to the Orca cloud when your phone, tablet, or Orca Display has an internet connection – where the data gets processed to give you detailed insights into your boating trips.
The design goal with Logbook is to give you data-driven insight into how you are boating. While many tools let you journal and write about your boating trips, none deliver automated data collection and analysis like the Orca Logbook. Logbook will help you answer questions such as:
Exactly how far and fast did I travel?
What were the wind and tide conditions during the exposed section of the trip?
How well did I sail?
A sailing trip recorded by the Orca Logbook.
Orca Core owners can access the Logbook via the Main Menu. From here, you get an overview of your most recent trip.
To view older trips, tap the arrow in the time selector at the bottom of the screen. You can also tap on the date at the center of the time selector to view all your past trips and select the one you want to review.
Tap on the date at the bottom of the screen to view all your past trips.
Logbook will show you detailed data about your navigation, sailing performance, wind, and tides depending on which sensors are available on your boat. To view more details about a topic, tap on it.
You will then be presented with a graph of the topic along with average and max values – letting you understand the development of a particular metric throughout your trip.
A windy day on the Swedish East Coast.
As a bonus: Logbook is also powering “Orca Wrapped”, a yearly summary that Orca Core owners receive. If you are curious about Orca Wrapped, and how Orca owners boated in 2023, check the yearly summary here.
The Future of Logbook
This update marks the first iteration of Logbook. In upcoming releases, more data and visualizations will be added to answer new questions, including:
What is the ideal RPM to optimize fuel consumption?
At which wind speeds do my sailing performance start to suffer?
How quickly does my battery charge when I’m going by engine?
Metrics-oriented boaters will soon be able to export logbook data into various formats, for fine-grained insight into boating and sailing performance.
Orca Core - the heart of Logbook
Logbook is made possible by Orca Core. Whenever the Core is powered on, it will record what is happening to your boat.
Orca Core powers many of the advanced features in Orca.
Orca Core is a Smart Navigation Hub that connects to your onboard sensors, radar, and autopilot – and gives you a complete chartplotter experience on your phone and tablet. Orca Core also doubles as a sailing processor, an integrated GPS, and an incredibly accurate compass. If you are looking for a smart upgrade of your boat, look no further.
Orca Core is delivered with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee and free express shipping. Order yours from the Orca Store today and get a rich and in-depth log of your 2024 boating season!
