VesselSOS turns your phone into a live boat tracker. The people ashore follow your position, course and battery in an ordinary browser link — no app, no account. Tracking runs only during a trip you start, and the same data pre-fills the emergency screen if the day turns. In beta on iOS now; Plus, which includes the link, is free during the beta.
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 to open the message, then Send. It opens in a browser — the person ashore installs nothing and creates no account.
Position, speed, course and your phone's battery level, live on a map — instead of waiting for an ETA that may or may not come. In distress the page turns red, with a Call 112 button.
The classic float plan — a written route and a return time left with someone ashore — fails in one predictable way: plans change and the paper doesn't. ETA-alert schemes like RYA SafeTrx (closed December 2025) automated the paperwork but still hinged on a timer. A live link means the timer is no longer the only safety net: your shore contact sees where you actually are, not where you said you would be — and if you are past your return time, the app asks you whether you are OK. The link stops working when you end the trip. If the dot stops moving somewhere it shouldn't, they know — and what to tell rescue is one page away.
Outside a trip the app does not 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 dying phone never reads as a drifting boat. And the same principle holds ashore: 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 does not alert rescue. In a life-threatening emergency the right call is 112 or VHF channel 16 — the app's emergency 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 is the point — the least technical person in your life can watch you.
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 own phone keeps its GPS fix fully offline, so the SOS screen still has your position and MAYDAY text.