A computer that lives on your boat. Not in a data center.
Most “smart boat” products are a thin app in front of someone else's servers. Vela is the opposite: the intelligence is a small, rugged computer aboard your boat. The cloud is optional.
Everything aboard.
Thinks on board.
Understands your boat.
Works without internet.
Answers at hand.
Ask questions. Get alerts.
Keep your log.
Connect when you want weather, lookups and downloads.
The thinking stays aboard.
Meet the Console.
A rugged computer about the size of a chart book, designed for life afloat. It runs on your boat's 12 V system, rides out engine cranking on its own buffer battery, and plugs into your NMEA 2000 backbone with the included adapter.
- 12 V native. Wires into your DC panel like any other piece of marine kit.
- Sealed enclosure. External cooling moves heat away while keeping the electronics protected inside.
- Serious compute. Enough horsepower to reason over your whole boat — instruments, manuals, history — without ever phoning home.
- Storage for the long haul. Years of instrument history, every manual, every log entry.
- Replaceable IP67 fan
- Sealing gaskets
- Anodised aluminium enclosure
- Wall-mounting points
- Sealed heat dissipation
It learns your boat by itself.
Power it up and it listens to the bus: finding your instruments, working out what they are, and naming them sensibly. No survey? No problem — tell it to set the boat up and watch it work.
- Automatic discovery. Every device on the NMEA 2000 network, identified and catalogued.
- Documents become knowledge. Add your survey; it finds and indexes the manual for everything aboard.
- Gets smarter with use. Logs, fixes, and quirks become part of the boat's record.
Only people on your boat get on your boat.
Adding a phone means proving you're physically aboard: press the button on the Console, open the app, done. No router passwords, no QR-code stickers, no port forwarding — and no way to join from a dock you're not standing on.
- Proof of presence. Only someone standing at the Console can add a device.
- Crew in seconds. Same button, same flow, for every member aboard.
- Revocable any time. Crew rolls off in Bonaire? Remove their device from the app.
The thinking happens on board. The cloud is a guest.
The Console does its own reasoning — no round-trip to a server farm. Mid-channel, mid-ocean, or in that marina where the Wi-Fi never works, your instruments, manuals, and history still answer with zero connectivity. Online, it steps up: bigger models for the hard questions, plus weather, parts, and fresh information. When the signal drops, the on-board brain carries on alone.
- No connection required to think. The reasoning happens aboard, full stop.
- Seamless handoff. Offline to online and back without missing a beat.
- Data sovereignty. Instrument history, documents, and chats live on the boat. Remote access is end-to-end — relay servers can't read your content.
Most cruising boats already qualify.
An NMEA 2000 network
Standard on most boats built or refit since the mid-2000s. A handful of instruments on the backbone is plenty to start.
12 V power
One feed from your DC panel. The Console sips power at idle and buffers itself through engine starts.
An iPhone or iPad
The app runs on recent iPhones and iPads. Every crew member can bring their own.
Put a Vela on your boat.
We're starting a small private beta. Add your email and we'll save you a berth.