I recently came across a very impressive smartphone app for weather routing, something I was waiting for a long time.
SailGrib WR allows weather routing, making use of the performance characteristics of different boats (through polar plots - some 100 boats are already included), tidal information and weather forecasts provided through GRIB files. The recently opened Meteo-France model forecast (Arpege and Arome) are already included (thus, it not only depends on the NOAA/NCEP GFS model).
In my view a MUST for all serious offshore and regatta sailors.
So far only Android is supported, but I know an iOS version is 'work in progress'.
As somebody working in the field of space-borne Earth Observation, I am in particular pleased to see that the Copernicus MyOcean Services (e.g. surface currents in the Med) are integrated, too.
A fantastic tool. For instance, I now plan my route using the Navionics app, export the route to a kmz file and use SailGrib WR to calculate the best route according to weather and current forecasts.
I proposed to Henri, the author of the programme, to extend the functionality by calculating the best time of departure within a given time window, possibly further constrained by the max motoring time. According to Henri, he had this already in mind, thus the extended functionality likely will be implemented in a future upgrade. Until then, I am playing around with different departure times which does the job,too.
Compared to other apps, SailGrib WR appears costly but is definitely worth every penny (I do not have shares in it!!!). A free version for testing with limited functionality is also available.
For further info see: http://www.sailgrib.com/
Feel free to share this info with other sailing friends and yes, if you come across the polar plots of a vintage HR352, let me know. I am very much interested in it.
