The free Coastguard app (Coastguard Tautiaki Moana) logs your trip report and gives you marine weather, tides and Nowcasting. If you don’t close your trip report, it prompts you, and after three prompts it texts your shore contact automatically. VesselSOS can’t do that yet: at your return time only your own phone asks “Are you OK?”. What VesselSOS adds is a live map link for the people ashore and a one-tap 111 call with the words ready. Use both: log your trip with Coastguard, and share your link with home.
A trip report puts your boat’s name and callsign, where you’re leaving from, your destination, route and ETA, and how many are on board on record with Coastguard. You log it on VHF with your local Coastguard Radio station, by calling *500 from your mobile, or in the Coastguard app. Here’s the part many boaties don’t know: a report logged by VHF or *500 isn’t actively watched. In Coastguard’s words, “Trip reports aren’t followed up unless we are notified that you are overdue,” so someone ashore still has to raise the alarm. Bar crossing reports are different: Coastguard follows them up if you don’t close them, usually after 15 to 30 minutes, and you can only make them by VHF or *500, not in the app.
The Coastguard app adds two things. If you haven’t closed your trip report, it prompts you, and “after three such prompts, if your report hasn’t been closed, the app will automatically send your shore contact an SMS.” And with location switched on, it sends your position to Coastguard every 30 minutes for as long as the app is open. It’s free, and needs an NZ App Store or Google Play account. From Coastguard’s app page and trip reporting page, checked 3 Oct 2026.
If you want your shore contact texted automatically when you don’t come back, the Coastguard app does that and VesselSOS doesn’t yet. Log a trip report with Coastguard every time, by app, VHF or *500, and a bar crossing report before every bar. VesselSOS is for being seen live by the people ashore and for making the 111 call fast. It isn’t connected to Coastguard, Police or RCCNZ, it doesn’t log trip reports, and it doesn’t replace a VHF radio, an EPIRB or a PLB.
Yes. It’s free on the App Store and Google Play, but it can only be downloaded with an NZ-based store account.
Not for a regular trip report: Coastguard follows it up only if someone reports you overdue, and the app texts your shore contact after three prompts. Bar crossing reports are the exception: Coastguard actively watches those and starts a search-and-rescue response if you don’t close them.
No. It doesn’t connect to Coastguard at all. Log your trip with Coastguard, and use VesselSOS for what a trip report doesn’t do: a live link your people can watch, and a 111 call with your position ready.
On VHF, yes: Coastguard says you need a VHF operator certificate and a callsign. In the app you register instead.
Yes. They do different jobs: the Coastguard app puts your trip on record and texts your shore contact if you don’t close it; VesselSOS shows your people where you actually are and gets the 111 call made fast.
It’s a TestFlight beta on iPhone now, by invite; it isn’t in the App Store yet, and Android comes later. Plus is free during the beta. See the plans for what’s in each tier.