|| Starpath online classroom || Electronic Navigation Glossary || Glossary Index || Home ||

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z 
optimum weather routing

This refers to computer or manual computations of the best route for a vessel to take based on its known performance in wind and waves and the existing forecasts for wind, waves, and currents.

"Best route" varies with application. In a sailboat race it is simply the fastest; when cruising we would look at safest and most comfortable; ships have various goals: safe fuel, save time, save cargo, save money.

It is crucial for efficient safe ocean shipping and there are several large international commercial companies that offer this service to shipping companies for many years now.

Racing sailors have used it for years and have developed it to a fine art, although it is always crucially tied to correct input on the environmental forecasts and the vessels performance. One goal of any sailor who wants to take part in this process is to collect as much data possible of boat speed in various wind and sea state conditions so they can improve on the polar diagram of performance provided by the yacht designer... which is always over optimistic!

Many navigation programs offer a routing option and there are also online services that do such routing by email communications.

One of the methods used to find the best route is the computation of isochrones, showing the possible locations of a boat headed in all directions from a specific point and then finding the path through these that is shortest.

Weather routing for sailboats is discussed throughout Modern Marine Weather; see in particular Section 10.7 on Sailboat routing. See also isochrone.

See also

http://www.fast.u-psud.fr/~rabaud/Articles/Optimal_routing.pdf

http://www.c-map.no/files/whitepapers/VoyageOptimizationversusWeatherRouting1.pdf

Ship routing is discussed in Bowditch, Chapter 42: https://msi.nga.mil/api/publications/download?key=16693975/SFH00000/Bowditch_Vol_1.pdf&type=view


[close window]