Polar Explorer Icebreaker

Set sail from the comfort of home

Free From Polar Explorer Oy, icebreaker.fi Made For iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch Needs iOS 9.3 or later

Ahoy there! If you’ve always dreamed of boarding a ship and heading into icy waters, this app offers a “seven decks” virtual cruise of one such vessel engineered to navigate those chilly climates. Available in 15 different languages, Polar Explorer Icebreaker is a guided audio tour, along with photos to help you visualize the details you’re listening to.

Whether you’re actually standing on the deck of the Polar Explorer or curled up safe, sound, and warm in your bed at home, the app requires no internet connection while in use, since you download the tour in your desired language on your iPhone ahead of time. Slap on your headphones, tap Play, and sail away through the rough, ice-covered waters of the Arctic and Antarctic seas.

Although the iPhone app provides visual flourishes including maps and video playback, the Watch app is strictly a remote control to start, stop, and jump between different sections of the tour. This comes in handy when all you want to do is kick back, close your eyes, and listen to the narrated tour, but photos are also displayed for some visual eye candy along the way.

A couple of downsides: There’s no audio from Apple Watch, and you’ll have to open the iPhone app to first download and select a language from those available — English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Hebrew, Malay, Indonesian, Thai, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese. And yes, there is a real, three-hour tour starting at €220 — assuming you can get to Swedish Lapland, that is.

The bottom line. The Apple Watch app is strictly a remote control for the guided tour, but still comes in pretty handy for kicking back and enjoying a cruise — real or virtual.