When navigating as a yacht operator, having echo trails or trails to track the movement of other vessels nearby allows yacht operators to anticipate their movements and locations over the ground to navigate effectively and avoid collisions.
Echo trails leave a faint path on the yacht’s radar so that yacht operators can track the history of the vessels’ locations and movements.
Different vendors call it differently. Garmin Marine calls it echo trails. Raymarine calls it relative or true trails. Simrad Marine calls it target trail. Different names, but they all have the same purpose of tracking faint paths of the nearby vessels.