NAV.01
Water-Only Routing
The route is solved across the lake surface itself, so it bends around every peninsula instead of drawing a straight line through it.
38 lakes across 22 states — charted and live
Navigation engineered to keep your hull off the bottom.
Buoy Pilot routes you over water only — around every point, shoal, and no-wake zone on the lake — and follows the channel markers the way someone who has boated it for thirty years would.
- 01
Plot
Water-only routes
- 02
Avoid
Shoals and no-wake
- 03
Arrive
Marker by marker
/ The Routing Engine
It already knows where the water goes.
Most map apps will happily send you straight through a peninsula. Buoy Pilot solves the route across the lake surface itself, then smooths it into a line you can actually steer.
buoypilot://routing-engineActive
0 mi
Shoreline
Every cove and point on the lake, charted
0.0k ac
Water Surface
Sampled into a navigable grid, not a guess
0%
Over Water
Routes never cut a corner across land
0 m
Jitter Filter
GPS noise rejected before it moves your boat
/ Capabilities
Six systems. One objective: your wake.
NAV.02
Channel Marker Guidance
Red and green markers, daybeacons, and the channel they define are all on the chart — so you can stay in the deep water the way locals do.
NAV.03
Live Heading & Position
Your boat, your heading, and your speed on the water in real time, with the compass wired to the phone's own sensors.
NAV.04
Shoal & No-Wake Awareness
Shallow humps that swallow lower units are flagged in amber, and no-wake zones are drawn before you are already inside one.
NAV.05
Destination Search
Marinas, boat ramps, fuel docks, and waterfront restaurants by name — pick one and the water route builds itself.
NAV.06
Built For The Helm
Phone-first, high contrast in direct sun, and installable to your home screen. No chartplotter, no subscription hardware.
/ Process
From dock to destination in four moves.
No chartplotter to mount, no course to plot by hand, no local handing you directions by landmark. Open it and go.
Drop Your Destination
Search a marina, ramp, or restaurant by name — or just tap the spot on the water you want to end up.
Take The Water Route
Buoy Pilot solves a path across the lake surface, bends it around land and shallows, then smooths it into a line you can steer.
Hit Go
Your position, heading, and speed go live. Distance and arrival time update as you run, and the map stays where you put it.
Follow The Markers
Run the channel marker to marker, with shoals and no-wake zones called out before you reach them — not after.
/ Coverage
38 lakes. 22 states. Charted on demand.
Every lake is charted from real hydrographic data — the water boundary, the islands, the shoals between you and the far shore. Where navigational aids have been surveyed, Buoy Pilot follows them; where they haven't, it says so plainly instead of guessing.
TX
Texas
4 lakes
GA
Georgia
3 lakes
SC
South Carolina
3 lakes
TN
Tennessee
3 lakes
CA
California
2 lakes
FL
Florida
2 lakes
KY
Kentucky
2 lakes
MI
Michigan
2 lakes
MO
Missouri
2 lakes
NC
North Carolina
2 lakes
NY
New York
2 lakes
AZ
Arizona
1 lake
ID
Idaho
1 lake
MN
Minnesota
1 lake
NH
New Hampshire
1 lake
NV
Nevada
1 lake
OH
Ohio
1 lake
OK
Oklahoma
1 lake
UT
Utah
1 lake
VA
Virginia
1 lake
VT
Vermont
1 lake
WI
Wisconsin
1 lake
Don't see your water? Open any lake in the index and Buoy Pilot charts it on first visit — the survey takes about a minute.
Browse The Lake Index/ Doctrine
Built by people who have run aground.
Buoy Pilot comes out of Bright Arc Software and a lot of hours on this particular lake. It is built on three rules.
A route across land is not a route
If a line cannot be steered by a boat, it does not get drawn. Every path Buoy Pilot returns is solved on water and nothing else.
The lake does not care about your signal
GPS wanders, phones lose bars, and glare washes out screens. The app is built for the worst conditions on the water, not the best.
Glanceable beats detailed
You are steering a boat, not reading a dashboard. Anything that cannot be understood in a one-second look does not belong on the screen.
“Everyone who knows this lake learned it by running aground once, or by riding with somebody who already had. Buoy Pilot is the second option.”
/ Cast Off
Your chartplotter cost two thousand dollars. This is free.
Open it on the phone already in your pocket, grant location once, and run the lake. Nothing to install, no account to make.
Open The Map
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