Where Pathr Co-Captain leaves the phone and lives on the boat itself.
HelmLink is a future SmartSail concept. A small piece of hardware that does two jobs at once. It speaks to the boat's existing autopilot and instruments so Pathr can drive them directly, no retyping. And it hosts the Co-Captain locally, so the AI advisor that knows your vessel, your routes, and the conditions keeps working even when the boat is offline.
Pathr Navigation ships first. Pathr Co-Captain comes next. HelmLink is where the whole stack comes home, on the boat.
Boaters today juggle two worlds. The app world is fast, modern, free of headaches. The helm world is chartplotters, autopilots, and instruments that were designed before the iPhone. Getting from one to the other still means typing waypoints by hand.
And the smart part lives in the wrong place. Modern marine AI runs on the phone, where signal disappears the moment you leave the harbor. The advisor that should know your boat best is the one that goes quiet first.
Boaters plan a route in a modern app, then re-type every waypoint into a chartplotter from 2008.
Each marine electronics vendor wants the boater locked into their stack. Cross-vendor integration is rare and expensive.
To get "modern" plotting, owners are told to replace working hardware. That's a wall of cost, not a path forward.
Modern routing software sits on a phone. The autopilot sits at the helm. Nothing connects them cleanly.
Marine AI advisors run on the phone. The moment cell signal drops, the advisor goes quiet. Exactly when the boater needs it most.
HelmLink lives quietly on the boat. A small piece of hardware that speaks to the existing NMEA network so Pathr can drive the autopilot directly. And the local home for Pathr Co-Captain, so the advisor that knows your boat keeps working when cell signal doesn’t.
Pathr generates the route. Depth-aware, hazard-aware, weather-aware. Same routing brain that already ships in the app.
A small piece of hardware that speaks to the boat's NMEA network and translates the Pathr route into something the boat's existing autopilot understands.
Waypoints arrive at the autopilot without anyone manually re-entering them. The boater monitors. The boat steers.
HelmLink hosts the Co-Captain locally. The AI advisor that knows your vessel, your routes, and live conditions keeps working when cell signal drops. Onboard, offline, with you.
Pathr Co-Captain runs on HelmLink itself. The advisor that knows your vessel and your routes keeps working when cell signal doesn't. Onboard, offline, on every trip.
HelmLink rides alongside the gear you already own. No 30-year-old screen to rip out, no $4,000 plotter to buy.
Pathr is the boater's app. HelmLink is the boater's bridge. Both work whether the rest of the helm is Garmin, Raymarine, B&G, or Furuno.
A clean handoff between routing software and the autopilot. The captain stays in command. HelmLink is a bridge, not a replacement.
HelmLink is not in the current Pathr Navigation roadmap. It's a future-rounds initiative, something we're researching now because we believe it's where this market eventually goes.
A modern boating navigation app, live on the App Store today. The product live conversation is about this.
An AI co-pilot built into Pathr. Briefs trips, watches the things you can't, learns your boat.
The bridge to the helm, and the home of the onboard Co-Captain. After Pathr and the Co-Captain are real businesses, HelmLink is where the whole stack comes home: on the boat, offline-capable, on every trip.
National Test Pilot School graduate. Led flight test and validation programs: the discipline of safely qualifying complex hardware systems under real operating conditions.
Built remote-control hardware and cloud systems at commercial scale. Knows what it takes to ship reliable embedded products.
Award-winning innovative product developer. Has taken hardware from rough concept all the way through commercialization.
We have the team to build it and validate it safely. That's the bar HelmLink has to clear before it ships. For now the company stays heads-down on Pathr Navigation and Pathr Captain. HelmLink waits its turn.
We're early. If you're a hardware partner, a marine OEM, or just a boater who'd love to see this exist, let's talk.