Google Maps Distance Measurement tool – Great for boating as well as driving

Last Updated on December 2, 2019 by Christopher G Mendla

You can enhance the functionality of Google Maps with some extra tools from Google labs.

You can get to the labs with http://maps.google.com/?showlabs=1  then enable the tools you want

Several tools that would be great for boaters are

• The Distance Measurement Tool – If you enable this, you will get a scale in the lower left of your Google maps that allows you to get a rough idea of distances. You can also click on the faint icon next to the ruler and enable a more extensive tool. This tool will allow you to sum up the distance between a number of points. An example would be if you wanted to get an idea of how far it would be on the intercoastal waterway between Atlantic City and Cape May. You can get a quick estimate by zooming in a bit and plotting points that roughly follow the ICW.
• LatLong Tooltip – You can press shift and see the latitude and longitude.
• LatLong Marker – Adds an item to the context marker to add a label with latitude and longitude.  This would be helpful for finding the coordinates of a desired waypoint on Google maps.