Looking for a boat tracking app? If you want to see ships and ferries, that’s an AIS app. If you want the people at home to see your own boat, that’s a live link, and that’s what VesselSOS does. They follow your position, speed, course and battery in an ordinary browser, with no app and no account. Tracking runs only during a trip you start, and the same data fills in the SOS screen if the day turns. It’s a TestFlight beta on iPhone now; the link is part of Pro (£2.99 a month or £17.99 a year, with a 14-day free trial).
Tap Going to sea, pick who sees you and set a return time. Tracking stops when you tap I’m ashore. Nothing runs before or after.
Your Live contacts get it by SMS: one tap opens the message, then you tap Send. It opens in a browser, so the person ashore installs nothing and signs up for nothing.
Position, speed, course and your phone’s battery level, live on a map. You choose how often it updates, from every 5 seconds to every 5 minutes.
The old routine was a passage plan and a return time left with someone ashore. RYA SafeTrx automated part of that until it closed on 31 December 2025. A live link goes further: your shore contact sees where you actually are, not where you said you’d be. If you’re past your return time and don’t answer the app’s “Are you OK?”, your Emergency and Live contacts get an automatic SMS with the live link (it never alerts the Coastguard; they decide whether to call 999). And if the dot stops somewhere it shouldn’t, what to say on the radio is one page away.
Outside a trip the app doesn’t track you at all. During a trip it reports in the background, every 30 seconds by default (roughly 4% battery an hour by our estimate), and below 20% battery it slows to every 5 minutes on its own. The people watching see your battery level, so a flat phone never reads as a drifting boat. Trip history is kept for 12 months, then deleted automatically. And this website sets no tracking cookies unless you allow them.
A tracking link is not a distress system. It tells your people where you are; it doesn’t alert the Coastguard. In a life-threatening emergency, use VHF channel 16 or DSC if you carry a radio, and call 999 or 112 and ask for the Coastguard. The app’s SOS screen makes that call fast, and offshore you should still carry a PLB or EPIRB.
No. The link opens in any browser, on any device, with no account. That’s the point: the least technical person in your life can watch you.
No. Ship-tracking sites show other vessels’ AIS signals. VesselSOS shares your own position, from your phone, with the people you choose, with no AIS hardware on board.
Yes. Set your craft type in the profile: sailing boat, motor boat, SUP/kayak or jet ski. Its name, type and colour go into the call script, and its name into the texts you send.
The link shows your last known position and that the signal is lost. Positions recorded without signal are queued and sent when coverage returns. Your phone keeps its GPS fix fully offline, so the SOS screen still has your position and MAYDAY text.