A few weeks ago, a shipyard contacted us with an unusual request.

One of their customer’s boats had just gone back into the water after a major refit. Everything appeared to be working, except for an intermittent GPS alarm that nobody could quite explain.

A recent support ticket reminded me how far we still have to go before AI becomes truly useful on boats.

When we started building Zora, we weren’t trying to create another display. The marine industry already has plenty of displays. What we kept running into was a different problem.

Real boats are messy. Different brands, different generations of equipment, different standards, all trying to work together. This is the story of why we chose the hard path with Zora, and how openness became the foundation for the next generation of intelligent boating systems.

Explore how AI and machine learning could improve situational awareness, safety, and decision-making onboard modern boats without replacing the captain. Learn how intelligent marine systems like Zora are shaping the future of boating.

Let’s say the quiet part out loud:

Chartplotters are no longer enough.

Not because they’re bad.

But because they were never designed for what boats have become.

In Nordic waters, technology is not adopted because it is fashionable.

It is adopted because it works reliably, transparently, and for the long term.

For decades, chartplotters have been the unquestioned center of the yacht helm. They’ve grown bigger screens, faster processors, and nicer graphics—but at their core, they haven’t changed.

That’s not evolution.

That’s preservation.

Pod Cast- iNav4U, CEO, Olivier Hendrikx

Interview by Paul Trammell, Author, Sailor, Podcaster