The only navigation system that truly understands weather

A sailing trip often starts with two simple questions: Where should we go, and what will the weather conditions be like along the way?

Answering those questions requires both charts and weather forecasts – but planning around weather, especially on longer trips, has traditionally been difficult. You need to understand weather, tides, and currents in relation to your route, compare conditions at different points along the journey, evaluate departure times, and piece everything together into a plan.

Until now, much of that work has been left up to you. Traditional chartplotters focus primarily on charts, forcing boaters to switch between multiple tools and devices in order to make informed decisions.

With Orca, you can better understand conditions along your route, make more informed decisions on the water, and ultimately enjoy a better boating experience. For an introduction to how Orca incorporates charts, routing, and weather into one app, check out the video below:

Understand the big picture and the details

Weather forecasts are inherently uncertain. A weather front may arrive earlier than expected, move along a different path than forecasted, or develop differently than models initially predicted. Understanding that uncertainty is an important part of making good decisions on the water, which in turn means you must understand both the big picture and the local details.

Orca’s weather experience is designed around exactly this.

Orca overlays high-resolution weather forecasts directly on top of your navigation chart, helping you understand how the weather will be at your exact location and your general surroundings. Animated weather layers make it easy to quickly understand how weather systems move and develop over time, letting you know if you are close to a weather front or if the conditions in your region are stable.

Orca's weather experience makes it easy to evaluate the conditions that matter most for your trip: rain, wind, waves, currents, and tidal heights are all available just a tap away from your navigation experience in Orca.

Planning routes with weather in mind

When planning a trip, you want to understand what the conditions will be along your journey. Orca’s Route Engine gives you a great overview of the forecasted weather along your route, but it will only give you the forecast along the route if you execute the trip precisely as planned.

To better understand if you have a wide or narrow weather window, or what happens if you deviate from your planned route, you need to understand the weather systems more broadly.

Orca’s weather experience shows you how the weather systems evolve as you progress along your route. This lets you easily discover if the wind will die down just as you reach your destination, or if you should have a backup plan because a weather front is passing near your intended route.

Understanding this context is especially valuable in areas with strong and complex currents.

For example, when crossing the English Channel, currents will affect arrival time but also comfort. By visualizing how currents change and cross-referencing against waves, you can now easily understand when you will face wind against tide, so you can better time a harbour approach.

Better boating starts with better data

There are many different weather models out there, and some are better than others for a given area. Orca’s weather experience builds on top of leading global and regional models, but you do not need to be a model expert to get a great experience.

By default, Orca automatically selects the most appropriate forecast model available for the region you are viewing. This helps ensure you get reliable and relevant forecasts without needing to think about model selection yourself.

For the English Channel and Solent, Orca uses the AMM15 Operational Model, which takes into account atmospheric conditions and forecasts to deliver an incredibly accurate wave and currents forecast. This model is available to all Orca users.

At Orca, we believe boaters should never have to compromise on data quality. Where other weather apps and navigation products often offer low-accuracy models to their free and entry-level plans, Orca does the complete opposite. In Orca, the very best models are available for all users, including those on the free Orca plan.

For free and Plus members, Orca’s forecasts are capped at 5 days. For boaters who want longer forecast horizons and manual model selection, the Smart Navigation plan unlocks forecasts up to 10 days. The Product Guide contains full details about features by subscription plans and forecast model availability.

What to do first

Open Orca and tap the weather icon on your chart. Try the wind layer first, then switch to waves or currents. Next, try creating a Route, then review the weather along the route by scrubbing the time slider forward to see how conditions will change over the course of your trip.

Customer Reviews

4.5 (167 reviews)

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Problematic customer service

04/09/26

Orca CoreOrca DisplayCanada +1 moreSailboat35-45 feet (10.5-13.5 meters)Living aboard +2 more10 connected devices

I purchased an Orca tablet and Core secondhand. The Core is linked to an incorrect email address. Even after Orca customer support confirmed they'd deleted that incorrect email, the Core still shows as assigned to it. It's now been nearly two months of very slow email-only support. I've repeatedly asked for text or phone contact, without success. Previously, I could sign in with the incorrect email and connect both an Android phone and tablet to my N2K network though the Orca tablet itself never connected. Now, I can't connect any device under my correct account to the Core at all, which means I can't use the subscription I'm paying for. I've asked for the Core to be replaced, since I've spent hours troubleshooting with no results. A real-time conversation; text, phone, or video, could likely resolve this quickly, but that hasn't been offered. This has been an extremely frustrating experience, and the time and money I've invested feel wasted.

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Display functionality

02/09/26

Orca CoreOrca DisplayUnited StatesSailboat25-35 feet (7.5-10.5 meters)Other +2 more9 connected devices

Display is almost impossible to turn off without trying multiple times and it should be a button that responds immediately to an inquiry. There are so many bugs that the display seems to have passed without any competent testing - the GUI is not as intuitive as it should be for the cost!!!!

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Innovative System, But Crucial Gaps Keep Me Paying for Navionics

17/06/26

Orca CoreGreeceSailboatOver 55 feet (16.5 meters)Short cruising trips13 connected devices

As a modern sailor managing a 17-meter yacht with a 3-meter draft, I am highly appreciative of Orca’s innovative approach, sleek interface, and modern features. It is a fantastic, forward-thinking system, and I gladly pay the €140 annual subscription just to support the development of such a promising product. However, despite having the full Orca setup on board, I am still forced to pay for and run a parallel Navionics subscription because Orca currently lacks a few critical navigational functionalities. There are two major areas where Orca falls short for my blue-water cruising needs: 1. Inaccurate Routing Around Fixed Obstacles (Bridges) The autorouting engine needs to become smarter regarding overhead clearance and openable structures. On a recent trip, Orca routed me straight through a bridge. While the bridge was visible on the map, the system completely ignored the fact that the bridge cannot be opened for a vessel of my mast height. I ended up stuck right in front of it, forced to backtrack and sail all the way around an island—adding an frustrating two hours of extra travel time to my journey. 2. Missing High-Resolution Depth Contours for Anchoring With a 3-meter draft, anchoring safely is a precise science. I always aim to anchor as shallow and close to the shore as possible to get maximum protection, while strictly avoiding running my keel aground. To do this safely, I absolutely depend on detailed, high-resolution depth contours. Right now, Orca’s depth data lacks the fidelity required for tight, shallow anchorages, forcing me to switch back to Navionics to cross-reference depths before dropping the hook. Conclusion Orca is an incredibly well-designed, innovative product that represents the future of marine navigation. I love the hardware and the overall ecosystem, which is why I remain a loyal subscriber. But until Orca implements reliable bridge clearance routing and high-resolution depth contours, it cannot be my sole primary system. I truly hope the development team addresses these gaps soon so I can finally drop my legacy subscriptions and rely 100% on Orca.

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Sweet product - many features in a box.

14/06/26

Orca CoreBaltic Sea +2 moreSailboat25-35 feet (7.5-10.5 meters)Short cruising trips10 connected devices

The Core2 together with the app offers a lot of flexibility. Instead of or replacing a regular chart plotter, It discovered all of my mixed bunch of instruments on NMEA2K and is very easy to use. It will even talk to my autopilot.

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Display 2

14/06/26

Orca CoreOrca DisplayGermany +1 moreSailboat35-45 feet (10.5-13.5 meters)Long trips13 connected devices

Hallo Orca Team, zwei Sachen, ich hatte mit eurem ki Assistenten korrespondiert und gefragt ob das Display eine Vesa Aufnahme hat. Dies wurde bejaht. Leider ist dem nicht so. Nach erneutem nachfragen sagte eurer ki Assistent dass eine Vesa Aufnahme nur mit einem Mount vorhanden ist. Da ich aber bereits einen Ram Mount habe, brauche ich die meisten Teile eures Mounts nicht. Ergo viel Geld für nichts. Zweitens, warum soll viele Google Apps? Ja, es ist ein Android System aber man kann den ganzen überflüssigen Google Mist, außer den Pay Store, nicht einmal entfernen. Denn was geht es Google an, wo ich segel, was ich nutze, was ich mache? Aber es gibt auch Lob. Euer Orca System ist gut. Ich nutze es als Redundanz zu OpenCPN auf einem Raspberry Pi 5 mit Bookworm. Danke und weiterhin viel Erfolg.

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