Marine Travel: Monitoring the weather and wind

[sailor2sun]

Anybody know about marine.travel?

It shows weather and wind forecast worldwide.
What is your opinions? Is it useful considering it is a free service?

[haiqu]

Any site that uses Flash isn't cruiser friendly, for a start. Seems fairly useless at first glance, lots of stupid popups and I couldn't actually get it to show the weather.

[Auzzee]

It does seem to be a site for those on land rather than afloat. It is not intuitive and there are many scores of others which are. I can't see myself bothering with it too much, given the number of weather sites which I am comfortable with. As I have mentioned previously, the following is a good real-time aid even though it is not a forecasting service.
earth :: an animated map of global wind, weather, and ocean conditions
Cheers.

[redbopeep]

Sailor2Sun, is that your own site? It really does seem geared towards land-based folks.

As an aside--we "moniter" the weather and wind using instruments on our own boat. We download grib files while cruising using the HF radio and then compare what we're seeing to what the grib files (or VHF) forecasts are giving. We log the wx and every once in a while take a look at the trends of where we've been and what the weather was. Example of that here.

Localized WX is really important while underway and I have kept track of WX for friends as they are on passage, sending them a short synopsis via the radio mail when something is changing that will impact them. This is also why many cruisers use weather routing services that are accessed via sat phone or hf radio.

Fair winds,

[Antwnis]

redbopeep i am the owner of that site..

I'm really interested in getting some directions

Why do you say it looks as if it is geared towards land-based folks? Is it the missing internet connectivity when on board or is it about somehow the perceived user experience ?

You say you "monitor" the weather and wind using instruments on our own boat ! I'm really interested. Where do you store your data ? Would a cloud/free solution that allows you to upload your monitored data into a nice looking UI within i.e. http://marine.travel make this something of use ?!

We are continuously looking for better and more local weather data, as weather is our business

You say you get grib files while cruising using the HF radio. Is that a free or paying service that you are referring too ? Is it provided per country level ? Are there multiple stations out there that you could receive HF radio forecasts ? Could http://marine.travel be one of those providers ?

Will be glad to have a discussion with you here
Thanks, Antonios

[redbopeep]

Hi, I'm moving this discussion over to Category "Marine Industry Vendors" (where you might get a look by our members who are looking for new service providers) with a permanent link to the weather forum.

[delatbabel]

It's a very pretty site for those on land but there's no way I could use a site that's that graphic heavy while aboard a boat. There just isn't the bandwidth, whether you're at sea or in an anchorage using a mildly dodgy 3G connection.

If you look at how most sailors get their weather forecasts they either come via GRIB files that can be loaded up on a laptop, or just text files of weather forecasts.

If you check the weather page on the wiki -- http://www.cruiserswiki.org/wiki/Weather -- you will see some examples of good places to get weather. For example, I can send an email to "query@saildocs.com" with the contents "send nadi.tong" and it will send me back a text email of the weather conditions in Tonga, as produced by the Fiji Metservice based at Nadi.

Websites with background maps and lots of flashy graphics aren't of any use to a mariner. I've previously raised this issue about Metservice NZ -- their weather forecasts (apart from being hopelessly inaccurate) are only available via the web site if you're able to pull down a map in a pop-out window and click on a region. Not something you can do while off shore relying on a sat phone for your connection.

Many cruising sailors, while at sea, have access to email only -- e.g. via sailmail/PACTOR or WINMOR. Those of us that do have internet access usually have a very low bandwidth link -- 128kbit/sec at best, and 9.6kbit/sec (dial up over satphone) being the most common.

[redbopeep]

Del,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.