Most navigators use a plotter by visually touching the screen where they want to create a waypoint or mark but there may be times where a list of waypoints needs to be imported – for instance club racing marks or a list of fishing hotspots that’s been passed down through generations. Here’s a neat way to share a waypoint list on NavLink – our iOS charting and navigation app.
Step 1.
Create a spreadsheet with the Latitudes and Longitudes either in Degrees, Minutes, Seconds or Decimal degrees with a header line including latitude and longitude like so:-
One caveat – If your co-ordinates are West of the meridian like mine are you will need to enter them as negative values before dropping on the kml converter! Ditto south of the equator.
Step 2.
If you have entered the co-ordinates in decimal degrees then you can just drag and drop the xls/cvs file you have just created and downloaded onto the kml converter tool:-
But if like me, you are stuck in the DD MM SS world then you need to use their “Convert DMS to decimal” tool first. Drag your xls/csv file onto it , edit the resulting csv file to change the existing DMS latitude and longitude fields to a different name, e.g. dmslatitude etc. and then drop the resulting file onto the KML Converter box above.
Step 3.
Convert the kml to a kmz file. Simply compress/zip the resulting kml file and rename the extension from .zip to .kmz.
e.g. ClubMarks.kml -zip-> ClubMarks.kml.zip -re-name-> ClubMarks.kmz and then email the kmz to yourself so you can pick it up in email on your iPhone/iPad
Open it in the iPhone email client.
Here are screenshots of the final step of the import process:-
- Open the email and tap the kmz icon.
- Press the button at the top right to import the file.
- Select your navigation app (NavLink UK or NavLink US) from the list of options to open the file with and hey presto, here are the three waypoints imported
It sounds complicated but its actually really easy and saves alot of typing