An anchor alarm that goes off every time the boat swings is an anchor alarm you switch off. Kedge is built around the one question that matters at two in the morning: is the boat swinging on its chain, or is the anchor actually dragging?
It answers that from the direction you move, not from a single line on a chart. Swinging scatters your positions all around the anchor; dragging walks them one way. Kedge watches a window of fixes and only wakes you when they agree on a direction. The swing circle is not a guess either: it follows the rode you let out and the depth you are lying in.
WHAT IT DOES
- Sets the anchor as a weighted average of ten GPS fixes, not one, so the centre of your circle is where the anchor really is
- Works out the swing radius from chain out, depth and boat length, plus the uncertainty of the fix itself
- Tells swinging from dragging by the spread of your bearings, so it sleeps through a normal night on the hook
- One screen at a glance: the swing circle, your boat as a dot, the trail of the last positions, and the distance from the anchor as one big number
- Long vibration and tone when it is real, with a ten minute snooze
- Night summary: hours at anchor, widest swing, and the direction the boat lies
- Rode, depth, boat length and radius all adjustable on the wrist, with wet hands, on START and MENU alone
- Metres or feet, following your watch
- A watch in progress survives closing the app
- English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish
WHAT IT NEEDS
- GPS. Everything is worked out on the watch: no phone, no account, no internet
- Keep the watch on charge overnight if you want a full night of watching
- Kedge is an aid, not a substitute for keeping a proper anchor watch
