Route Planing on Windy

[Codger2]

Originally Posted by Bacchus

I looked a several before an extended US / Canada Cruise in 2019 and came to the same conclusion. Here is a short article I wrote for our ABC-FLX boating club as an intro to Windy. Hope it helps.

Thanks for including your article, Don. I read it and saved it to my library. It's a very informative article.

I'm 79 years old and have messed around in boats since I was 10 and the weather thing has always interested me. In 1967 I earned my commercial pilots license and was stunned at how little instruction time was devoted to weather information. Discovering Windy.com is one of my most interesting finds for my cruising needs. There's a lot to learn from it and I process more info from it every day.

Here's just one example of a tool that shows what you can see with one click on your route. This route is on a strait line from San Diego to Catalina Island. There's no course line as my old iMac couldn't plot it.(My smart TV does, however!) It not only shows swell height & time interval, it also shows wind speed & from what direction for both swell and wind.

[Bacchus]

Codger2
If interested in digging more into Wx the USPS aka Americas Boating Club Wx course is worthwhile. NOAA also has a comprehensive Wx course online with session questions to check comprehension.
If interested and you can't find it send me a PM and I can provide a link.
What you showed for windy along a route is what I have done previously by saving some favorite locations and then clicking on them. I'll be playing with courses to see if it is easier.
Thnx

[Codger2]

[QUOTE=Bacchus;860452]

Codger2, NOAA also has a comprehensive Wx course online with session questions to check comprehension. Yes!......What you showed for windy along a route is what I have done previously by saving some favorite locations and then clicking on them.

I'll be playing with courses to see if it is easier. Please keep me posted on this!

Thanks so much for your input, Don....It's great to have a new opinion on Windy!

[Wxx3]

Originally Posted by Codger2

Thanks for including your article, Don. I read it and saved it to my library. It's a very informative article.

I'm 79 years old and have messed around in boats since I was 10 and the weather thing has always interested me. In 1967 I earned my commercial pilots license and was stunned at how little instruction time was devoted to weather information. Discovering Windy.com is one of my most interesting finds for my cruising needs. There's a lot to learn from it and I process more info from it every day.

Here's just one example of a tool that shows what you can see with one click on your route. This route is on a strait line from San Diego to Catalina Island. There's no course line as my old iMac couldn't plot it.(My smart TV does, however!) It not only shows swell height & time interval, it also shows wind speed & from what direction for both swell and wind.

Wonderful idea.
Now, get out there and verify how accurate it is.

I use Windy for no- no go decisions and possible wx windows.

To use it and expect accuracy in route planning is cruising for a bruising.

Along the west coast, from Panama to Alaska, I found its point forecasting to be useful, as long as I used a range of 50% and 12 hours.

Roughly, this means that with winds forecast to be 270° at 12 kts at 12z. I plan for a range of winds from 230° to 310° from 6 kts to 18 kts at 12z.

Generally I've found that on the ocean , as opposed to inland waters, the wind speed is under forecast 90% of the time.
But there could be some use bias in that observation, in that I'm not going out if winds are fcst to be 20 kts, but in reality only 15. But i notice when fcst to be 5 and they are 12.

Use Windy, which I also think is the best GUI out there, as a general wx conditions tool, not as a spot fcst for any given time and place, as it won't be accurate.

Richard on Dauntless and ex wx man

[Bacchus]

Richard
Just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to Windy and for your advice. I have to say our great lakes experience last year was very successful Wx wise and made for pleasant boating. In one case we waited for a favorable window and in another we cut a stay short to take advantage of a better window. All due to Windy

Thanks

[Codger2]

Originally Posted by Bacchus

I find it easier to enter and save a few locations I plan on cruising to and look at the fcst for the next / each of the selected points

I have been doing exactly that with a few of my favorite routes and have been able to retrieve them when logging back on to the Internet. I can look a route up days later & by moving the time line on the bottom of the screen, I get a brand new forecast! As previously noted, this exercise is specifically for easy route planning and not for the auto pilot. As previously stated, I use my iPhone hot spot and my salon'e smart TV for the planning functions.

[racerrick]

All the comments about using Windy & its various weather features are accurate & useful. It is not, however, a chart plotter. It is useful to estimate cruise distance from estimated waypoint to waypoint & from that TSD & fuel calculations can be reasonably estimated, particularly in inland & near coastal waters. That feature has been accurately described in previous posts. It is a tool to estimate routes/TSD/fuel, not to chart plot. It is indeed a great weather instrument, particularly with go-no go decisions & predicting wind/wave conditions over longer cruise times. Even having Sirius weather on my Garmin for current & radar information, my first go to is Windy. As a first choice or as a backup chart plotter on a laptop, Coastal Explorer is very good & features automatic, frequent chart updates. I use my Garmin split screen chart plotter/radar (I personally am not a fan of radar overlay of the navigation chart but that is personal choice) & Coastal Explorer on a Getac laptop as a larger display underway. The update feature of Coastal Explorer also reduces the frequency of buying current 2gVision chips.

[JohnEasley]

We used Windy and it's route planning feature along with NOAA forecasts over a period of several days to form a go/no-go decision for a Gulf crossing earlier this week. We found Windy's predictions to be spot-on, even down to the hour things would start to get sloppy as we arrived at the coast. It helped make for a successful crossing. I'm a believer.

[tpbrady]

Richard,

I went back and reread this thread while I am sitting in the rain and wind in Wrangell, and thought I would get your opinion on Windy in regard to inland waters in SE Alaska. I have found Windy to more or less useless for inside waters of SE. Winds rarely if ever blow across straits like Clarence or Chatham. They are generally funneled by terrain. Windy does not take into account terrain whereas NOAA does. For example Windy shows winds at Lincoln Rock (LCNA02) as SW at 8 knots. The current observation from NOAA is SSE at 20 with gusts to 30 knots. Windy in this case is not even close. The best example of terrain funneled winds is often found in Sumner St. With any wind with a southerly component, the portion of Sumner St south of Pt Baker will be subject to the wind, while the area from Pt Baker east to Red Bay will be ok, then the wind blowing up through Snow Pass takes over. The stronger winds in Clarence St with a southerly component sometimes make the portion of Sumner St east from Pt Baker to Snow Pass pretty rough. From Port St John east to Wrangell, winds are generally not a factor most of the time. Windy is too macro in its view to show this, making it generally not a very good tool for inside waters.

Tom

[RCook]

Hi Tom,

Can't comment much on Windy's accuracy in SEAK's narrower channels (especially odd spots like Lincoln Rock), but for me and friends it has been excellent for the outside, and for crossing the Dixon.

Its very granular forecast is so much more useful than NOAA's area forecasts - enabling us to make correct go-nogo decisions in weather that sounded very iffy on NOAA. I find it very good in BC as well.

Predictwind is similarly good in my experience.

[Comodave]

We have found Windy to usually be right on here on Lake Huron but we don’t have the high mountains that are in Alaska....