Skipper

Where the data comes from

Everything below is open data. We ask for it from our own server, so your browser is not handed over to anyone, and we keep the answers cached for a while.

Base map

OpenFreeMap · OpenStreetMap ODbL

Coastline, harbours and settlements — drawn by the OSM community. Tiles are served by OpenFreeMap without any key.

Sea marks

OpenSeaMap ODbL

Buoys, lights, cardinal marks and harbour details, collected by sailors themselves.

Satellite imagery

Esri World Imagery Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics

Useful for anchoring: in shallow water the sand shows light and the weed dark.

Depths

EMODnet Bathymetry CC BY 4.0

Depths for the European seas, about 100 m per cell. We colour them ourselves: their own styling shows only the 50 and 100 m contours, and in white — near the shore, where depth actually matters, it shows nothing.

Weather and sea state

Open-Meteo CC BY 4.0

Wind, gusts, waves, water temperature and currents; for dates beyond the forecast we use their archive of past years. Based on national weather services (DWD ICON, ECMWF, MeteoFrance and others).

Coastline for routing around land

OpenStreetMap land polygons ODbL

The same coastline, rasterised to about a hundred metres per cell. It is what lets the service take a leg around an island instead of straight over it.

Places and search

Nominatim · Overpass · OpenStreetMap ODbL

Searching for a marina or a bay, and the list of what is nearby: water, fuel, groceries, a pharmacy.

Place descriptions

Wikipedia CC BY-SA 4.0

A short article about the island or the town you are heading to.

Sun and moon

our own calculation no external service

Sunrise, sunset, civil twilight and the moon phase are computed on our side by the standard NOAA formulas — checked against Open-Meteo to within a minute.

None of this replaces official charts and pilot books. Depths and marks are for planning only: check the passage against the paper or the plotter before you sail it.