Meet the Maritime Master Family of Apps
- Reece Smith-ward
- Jul 24
- 5 min read
The Maritime Master family has grown into eleven apps, each built around one simple idea: clear, offline-friendly study aids for learning the sea. Some are broad and welcoming, some focus on a single subject, and some are practical toolkits you can keep in your pocket. All of them are made for study and revision, never for real navigation.
If you are not sure where to start, this short tour groups the apps by what they are for. Read the section that matches how you like to study, and you should find the right fit. Every app is on the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, and the OOW app is also on Google Play for Android.
Learning the theory
Maritime Master is the free all-round companion and a good first stop. It brings interactive tools, the rules of the road, seamanship, and exam practice into one place, with content tiered from beginner topics up to advanced watchkeeping material. You can look around the ship, bridge, and engine, explore radar, sonar, and echosounder views as visual learning aids, work through the full COLREGs and IALA buoyage, and try mixed exam papers. There are no ads, no subscription, and no account needed, and it works offline.
Maritime Master Skipper is a free day skipper theory app for small-craft navigation. Its interactive worked examples for position fixing, dead reckoning, and course to steer respond to the numbers you enter, so you can practise chartwork methods and see each step. It also covers tidal heights and streams, the COLREGs, IALA buoyage for both regions, meteorology, and passage planning. It is designed to support a shorebased theory course rather than replace one.
Professional study
Maritime Master OOW is a study companion for Officer of the Watch candidates and working deck officers. It gathers navigation and terrestrial calculators, a radar plotting assistant, stability and meteorological tools, and a broad reference library covering the COLREGs, regulation summaries such as SOLAS, MARPOL, and STCW, ECDIS and AIS material, and GMDSS. A private sea time and voyage log, kept in your own iCloud account so only you can see it, sits alongside an OOW progress tracker, exam question sets, flash cards, and a growing library of downloadable PDF study documents, many of them free.
Focused revision tools
Some apps do one subject thoroughly. Maritime Master COLREGs breaks every rule from 1 to 38, plus the annexes, into plain English backed by the convention wording, with flip cards, scenario diagrams, quizzes, and a night lights view. Maritime Master Nav Lights uses 3D vessels at night that you can orbit from any aspect to see how each lighting state and day shape changes, with two quiz modes. Maritime Master IALA Buoyage explains the marks with clear visuals and animated lights, includes a light simulator that builds any IALA rhythm, and tests you with five quiz modes.
Maritime Master Radar is a radar simulator for learning and revision, where you practise reading and plotting on a simulated display with relative and true motion, ARPA practice, guided training packs, and detailed debriefs. Everything on screen is simulated with no connection to real radar, AIS, or GPS, and it is a study and practice tool, not a substitute for an approved radar or ARPA course. It offers free classic scenarios, with optional Pro and Pro Max subscriptions that unlock unlimited procedural watches, all training packs, and more.
Practical tools
A few apps are hands-on toolkits. Maritime Master CalcDeck is a large library of maritime calculators for the whole ship, from navigation and celestial work to stability, engineering, commercial, and safety, with clear inputs that show the method behind each result; a generous set is free, including all twelve unit converters, and a single one-time CalcDeck Pro purchase unlocks the full library. Maritime Master Knots renders forty two essential knots as animated 3D rope you can rotate and scrub, with step by step instructions and Ashley Book of Knots references. Maritime Master Whiteboard lets teachers and students sketch pilotage plans and chartwork over chart-style backdrops, then export and share the result.
Tides and charts
TideDeck, launched in July 2026, is a tide times and charts app that computes the tide for anywhere on Earth on your device. It is built for people who watch the water, such as swimmers, paddlers, anglers, photographers, and dog walkers on tidal sands. A live home screen shows the current height, whether the tide is rising or falling, and the next high and low with a countdown, and you can scrub the day's curve, browse best days ahead, and explore sun and moon data. Tide predictions work fully offline, while weather, live observations, and map search need the internet. TideDeck is free, and TideDeck Pro extends the forecast horizon to a full year ahead, available as an annual subscription or a one-time lifetime unlock.
Please read this first
Across the whole family, everything is for learning, study, and revision only. These apps are not for real-world navigation and are not a substitute for approved training or equipment. Radar is a simulator with no connection to real radar, AIS, or GPS; it does not replace an approved radar or ARPA course, and its completion certificates record practice, not qualifications or certificates of competency. The light and radar views in the other apps are stylised study aids, not real instruments, and the private sea time log in OOW does not replace official records or an official logbook.
Knots are safety equipment, so practise with real rope, inspect your line before use, and never rely on any app alone where a knot bears load or protects life; for climbing, rescue, and working at height, always get qualified in-person instruction. TideDeck predicts the height of the tide above a reference level, so it does not know the depth of the water or the level of the seabed, does not include storm surge, wind, or barometric effects, and does not predict tidal streams; it is a planning and interest tool, not a nautical publication, and its predictions are exact only at its bundled US stations and modelled elsewhere. For any real navigation, always use official charts, tide tables, light lists, approved instruments, and your harbour authority, and keep a proper lookout.
