Orca appoints Knut Frostad to drive navigation platform growth

When a navigation app brings in a former Navico chief executive and Volvo Ocean Race leader, it is not just polishing its image. Orca has added Knut Frostad as a board member and executive advisor, putting a heavyweight sailor with offshore, Olympic and electronics experience into a company that wants to become more than another chart app.

For sailors, the practical question is what that changes on the boat. Orca says Frostad will help shape strategic growth, product direction, industry partnerships and international expansion, which puts him close to the parts of the platform that affect how a skipper plans a passage, checks weather and connects the app to onboard gear. That matters because Orca was built around a simple frustration, it says more than 70% of boaters with a dedicated marine navigation system still feel they need mobile apps for planning and navigation.

The company has been leaning hard into that gap. Orca describes itself as navigation for the modern boater and says its product combines modern apps with traditional chartplotter functionality through the Orca App and Orca Core. The current feature set already includes weather overlays on charts, route-based weather views, autopilot integrations, radar support and offline charts. Orca also says its global chart portfolio is available without a subscription, which is a sharp sales point in a crowded market that a 2026 company profile says includes 83 active competitors.

The software has kept moving in 2026. Orca introduced a weather experience that overlays high-resolution forecasts directly on top of navigation charts and automatically selects the most appropriate forecast model for the region being viewed. Its changelog also lists tide and weather improvements, Doppler radar integration, autopilot improvements and route-preview redesigns. The company has also made Met Office forecast models for British waters free to all users, which is exactly the kind of detail that can make the difference between a tidy passage plan and a mess of tabs, charts and second-guessing.

Kristian Fallrø, Orca’s co-founder, framed Frostad’s arrival as validation of the company’s vision, while Frostad said throughout his career he has cared about making sailing and navigation more accessible and that Orca stands out because it mixes sophisticated technology with a modern, intuitive experience. That is the real test here. If Frostad helps Orca turn those upgrades into a cleaner planning workflow and tighter onboard integration, the platform gets harder to ignore for anyone trying to keep weather, route choice and boat control on one screen instead of three.