Your Dashboard shows the boat's latest reported position and readings. Check the update time before treating them as current. This page explains what each value and button means.

Open your dashboard

Signing in lands you there, and it is the Dashboard tab on a phone. Its address is saillogger.com/app.

The screen keeps itself current: your readings, the AIS traffic your own receiver hears, and the AIS Fleet, Friends and fleet layers refresh on their own. Leave it open and you normally do not need to reload it.

The boat card

The card is your boat at a glance, on the chart she is drawn on:

• Her name, and under it a status: Underway, or where she is lying, such as In Red Bluff Bay.
• The passage so far, beside that status while you are under way: how far you have run and how long you have been going, for example Underway · 42.6 nm · 8h 10m. It counts from where this trip began, not from the start of the cruise.
• Heading to <place>, when you have set a destination. Otherwise the card shows your Make & model.
• A row of headline readings: Speed, Heading, Depth, Wind with its direction and the last hour's strongest, temperature (air, with sea and cabin beneath it) and Battery with its voltage. A reading your boat has never sent is not shown at all.
• When it last reported, at the foot: Updated just now, or how long ago. If your boat has gone quiet the card says so.

The chevron at its corner folds the card down to a single pill, which is what you want when the chart matters more than the numbers. Tap the pill to open it again. Folded, it still carries her name, whether she is moored, at anchor or under way (her speed, while she is going), and how long ago she last reported. If she has gone quiet the pill says so in words rather than leaving you to notice.

Three chips sit at the bottom of the card:

• Instruments, the full gauge panel, below.
• Journal, this cruise's notes and photos: see Notes, photos and your journal.
• Share, which hands over your public live address. It reminds you that anyone holding that link can see where your boat is.

The instruments

Instruments opens the panel built from what your boat actually reports. A section your boat does not send is hidden, not shown empty. That is why two boats can have quite different panels, and why a section can appear the day you add a sensor.

• Wind and depth shows wind speed with a direction arrow, and depth. When Saillogger has a figure for the last hour it adds a 1h max caption underneath.
• Temperature shows outside, inside and water temperature. Each one appears only if you have a source for it.
• Humidity shows inside and outside humidity.
• Battery is an arc for state of charge with the voltage printed in the middle. This is your main or house battery.
• Barometer shows the current pressure. Its trend line is different: it needs a few hours of readings behind it before it can draw anything, so a newly connected boat sees the number before it sees the line.
• Any custom sections you have built yourself appear below these.

The wind arrow points where the wind is going

The arrow shows the direction the wind is blowing toward, not where it comes from. An arrow pointing south means a northerly.

Weather charts and wind barbs commonly use the opposite convention, so compare the arrow with its label when the direction looks unexpected.

Where wind direction comes from

The wind arrow uses the Signal K path environment.wind.directionTrue. Most NMEA 2000 networks do not carry it: instruments broadcast apparent wind, and true direction has to be calculated.

The Signal K derived-data plugin (github.com/SignalK/signalk-derived-data) can calculate it. After installing the plugin, enable True Wind Angle, Direction and Speed in its configuration. The calculation also needs heading and speed through water.

Why a value is blank rather than wrong

Saillogger leaves a reading blank when it is no longer current. Check the sensor's timestamp, power and selected source rather than treating a blank as zero.

The buttons on the chart

Three controls sit on the chart itself, and they are yours alone. Visitors to your public page see none of them.

• Map layers, which opens the panel described below.
• Set a destination, the flag. It appears only while you are under way.
• Center on your boat, for when you have panned away.

A panel you open from these buttons appears beside them, and the button stays lit while it is open. Close it with the × in the panel's corner, by pressing the same button again, with Esc, or by tapping the water. On a phone, and on any screen too narrow to hold a panel beside the chart, the panel slides up from the bottom instead. Pull its top bar down to close it, or tap the bar; on a vessel card, you can pull from the name at the top as well. The panels that belong to your boat card, Instruments and Journal, open beside the card rather than out here.

The card for a boat you tap on the chart opens beside her, with a small arrow joining the two, and it stays with her while you pan and zoom. It steps around your own boat card and around the buttons, so it can end up on either side of her. While it is open it covers that patch of water: to reach a boat underneath it, close the card first. On a phone the same card comes up from the bottom of the screen, where your thumb is.

Set a destination

While under way, press the flag and then tap the chart. Saillogger names the point, marks it with a checkered flag and puts Heading to <place> on your boat card. Tap the flag on the chart for the Distance to go, which updates as you run it off.

To move it, press the flag button again and tap the new spot. To clear it, tap the flag on the chart and choose Clear destination, which asks once before it goes.

The anchor circle

If a circle appears around your boat when you are anchored, it reflects the anchor position and radius published by your boat as navigation.anchor. Change the alarm radius aboard and the displayed circle changes with it. Tap the circle for its Swing radius.

Your track is drawn behind you, so a night's swinging on the hook shows on the chart as it happens.

Map layers

Map layers opens Show on map. The layers are yours alone: visitors to your public page never see which you have on, or the fleets and friends they name.

Each row carries a live count of what is on the chart. A layer that is on with nothing to draw says None nearby rather than disappearing. In a busy area, AIS Fleet may say that more vessels are out there than the chart is drawing.

My vessel photos appears once one of your photos is published in a vessel's gallery, and not before. It shows every vessel you have photographed, in gold, each at her latest recorded position and not only the ones near you. A vessel that has not been heard from lately is still drawn, faded, and her card leads with when she was last seen: that mark is where she was, not where she is. Her speed, heading and distance are left off rather than repeated from an old report. See AIS Fleet vessel photos.

Show all and Hide all, at the top of the panel, set every layer at once, which is quicker than working down the rows when you belong to several fleets. Show all includes AIS Fleet, which is otherwise off by default; Hide all leaves your boat alone on the chart. Your choice is remembered, as it is for a single row.

Joining a fleet later puts it on your chart, whichever way you last set these: a new fleet always announces itself.

Local AIS traffic and AIS Fleet can overlap. They may differ because your own receiver and the broader AIS coverage do not always hear the same vessels at the same time.

Find a boat on the map

The modern app's map can find a boat by name, MMSI, call sign or IMO number: the magnifier button opens the search. Results are listed closest to your boat first, with your own boat, boats you follow and your fleet-mates ahead of ordinary traffic. Pick a boat that has reported recently and the map takes you to her and opens her card. A boat that has not been heard for a while opens her card without moving the map, and the card says how long ago she was last heard. She stays on the chart for as long as she is selected.

Wikipedia points of interest

Saillogger shows a handful of Wikipedia places near the boat, each with a short extract from the article. It is on by default.

To turn it off, open Settings, go to Dashboard, and switch off Wikipedia points of interest.

Choose where the displayed cruise begins

Show my cruise from defines the historical range shown on your dashboard and in your journal.

Your chart can draw the whole cruise behind you, not just the current trip. It does that from one setting: Settings > Dashboard > Show my cruise from. You pick a trip, and Saillogger draws everything from that trip onward.

With Latest position only chosen instead:

• there is no historical track on the chart, only the trip you are on
• the journal panel and the journal page are empty because no display range is selected

A blank journal usually means Saillogger has not been told where your cruise starts, so it has no range of trips to collect notes from. Setting the starting trip makes those existing entries visible.

Saillogger normally sets this for you after your first trip, so a blank one usually means a new account, or one where the setting was cleared.

To set it:

1. Open saillogger.com/app/settings/dashboard.
2. Find Show my cruise from at the top of Dashboard.
3. Choose the trip your cruise starts with. Choose the oldest trip in the list to draw your entire history.
4. Reopen your dashboard. Your track and your journal are both there.

To clear it again, choose Latest position only, the first entry in the same list.

What else you can tap on the chart

Your own boat's story is the card, above. Everything else on the chart opens a card of its own:

• Another vessel, whether she came from your own receiver, from AIS Fleet, from Friends or from a fleet. The card names her, then carries whatever AIS knows about her: MMSI, Status, Speed, Heading, Type, Size, where she says she is bound, how far off she is and when she last reported. A row her broadcast does not carry is left out rather than shown empty. Status never puts a boat at a place she has left: it names where she is lying once her reporting confirms she is there, and otherwise says plainly that she is moored or under way. A photograph comes with it when the catalog has one, and you can add one yourself. Depending on the boat and your relationship, the card also lets you follow or message her, draw her last 24 hours, or add her to a fleet you own. Add to fleet opens a sheet listing your fleets; choose one to add her, and the sheet reports the result. A boat that logs with Saillogger carries a link to her pages.
• Your destination flag, with the Distance to go.
• Your anchor circle, with its Swing radius and how far the boat is lying from the anchor.
• A Wikipedia place, with the opening of its article and a link to read the rest.

History charts

The instruments show current readings. For the last day or week, go to History: saillogger.com/app/history. You can look at 24 hours, 48 hours or 7 days, including your own custom sections.