Your live page 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 live page

Open the monitoring menu in the top navigation and choose realtime tracker. The page lives under https://saillogger.com/monitor/. Once Live Tracking & Monitoring is on in your Sharing settings, Saillogger sends you on to your boat's public address, which is the same page at the address you can give to other people.

The page 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 gauges

The panel down the side is 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 & 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.

Each section heading is a link into the history charts for that reading.

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 down the right side

These controls use icons and are visible only to the owner. Some appear only while the boat is underway or stopped, as noted below.

• Pencil: add a note at the boat's current position. Only while underway, and only while no geofence is set. The note lands on the track where you wrote it and stays there in the finished trip.
• Anchor: draw a geofence while you are stopped, or clear one. Once a geofence exists the icon stays available while underway, so you can always clear it.
• Book: open the notes panel, which lists every note and photo of this cruise. It appears once Initial Tracking Position is set (see below).
• Camera: upload a photo of where you are now. Only while underway.
• Flag: set or clear a destination. Only while underway.
• Share: send someone the link to this page.

The anchor circle and the yellow line

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.

Saillogger draws one thing of its own while you are stopped: a thin yellow line through the positions recorded since you stopped, so you can see how the boat has swung. It covers the last day, so a boat sitting in a marina for a week shows you recent swinging rather than a scribble of the whole stay.

Geofencing

A geofence is an area you draw on the map. If the boat leaves it, Saillogger sends you an alert.

To set one:

1. Make sure the boat is stopped. A geofence cannot be set while you are underway.
2. Click the anchor icon on the right of the map.
3. Read the warning and accept it.
4. The map shows: Click at least three points on the map to create an area to geofence. Click your points.
5. After the third point the tip changes to Click on the first point to close the geofence. Click your first point again to close the shape.

The area appears as a red outline. The area must contain your boat's current position, so draw it around the boat rather than beside it.

To clear it, click the same icon again and confirm.

If the boat leaves the area, the alert reads ALERT: <your boat> has left the designated geofence! and is delivered through whatever you have turned on under Monitoring Alerts in your notification settings. If you have turned phone notifications off, Saillogger warns you about that when you set the fence.

Geofencing is on the classic monitoring page only.

If it does not work

• The anchor icon is missing: you are underway and no geofence is set. A new geofence can only be drawn when the boat is stopped.
• Nothing happens when you click: the shape only closes when you click within a short distance of your first point, and only after at least three points.
• No alert arrived: check Monitoring Alerts in your notification settings, and check that phone notifications are on if you expected a push.

Set a destination

While underway, click the flag icon and then click the map. Saillogger names the point and marks it with a checkered flag. Your boat's popup then carries a Destination row with the name and the distance still to run, which updates as you go.

Click the flag again to clear it.

Map layers

Open the layer control on the map. You get three base maps and a set of overlays. The overlays are yours alone: visitors to your public page never see which layers you have on, or the fleets and friends they name.

Base maps:

• Satellite Overlay, the default, satellite imagery with place names and roads drawn over it
• Satellite, imagery on its own
• Street Map

Overlays:

Each row carries a live count of what is on the map. A layer with no current results is dimmed rather than hidden, such as Friends 0. In a busy area, AIS Fleet may show 500+ to indicate that more vessels are available than the map is displaying.

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.

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 Monitoring & Tracking, and switch off Wikipedia Points of Interest.

Choose where the displayed cruise begins

Initial Tracking Position defines the historical range shown on your live page and in your journal.

Your live page can draw the whole cruise behind you, not just the current trip. It does that from one setting: Settings > Monitoring & Tracking > Initial Tracking Position. You pick a trip, and Saillogger draws everything from that trip onward.

With nothing chosen:

• there is no historical track on the live page, only the trip you are on
• there is no Cruise Dist. row in the boat popup
• the notes panel and the journal 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/settings/?tab=monitoring.
2. Find Initial Tracking Position at the top of Monitoring & Tracking.
3. Choose the trip your cruise starts with. Choose the oldest trip in the list to draw your entire history.
4. Reopen your live page. Your track, your cruise distance and your notes panel are all there.

To clear it again, choose the blank entry at the very top of the same dropdown. That blank entry is easy to miss: it is part of the list, above the first trip.

What the boat popup tells you

Click your boat to open it. The rows you see depend on what the boat is doing:

• Updated, how long ago the position came in
• Make & Model, if you have set them on your Boat settings page
• Position
• Status, the navigation status

Then, while underway:

• Departed, how long ago you left
• Trip Dist., distance run on this trip
• Wind Speed
• Boat Speed
• Destination, with distance to go, if you have set one

And when stopped:

• Arrived, how long ago you got in

A Cruise Dist. row appears whenever Initial Tracking Position is set, and counts the whole cruise rather than the current trip.

History charts

The gauges show current readings. For the last day or week, choose history from the monitoring menu, click any gauge section heading, or go straight to saillogger.com/monitor/history/. You can look at 24 hours, 48 hours or 7 days, including your own custom sections.

If your boat is on the modern app, the same charts are at /app/history.