PassageWeather, first impression

... written for Panbo by Ben Ellison and posted on Feb 6, 2008

PassageWeather screen cPanbo

PassageWeather.com is apparently brand new, but impressive, offering free 7-day sailing forecasts for all oceans, updated 4 times a day. The interface seems clean and fast, data sources are explained, and you can download forecast charts easily. The region organization is nice too, and note that the ocean race routes are always forecast, so you can, as above, quickly see that heading, say, Norfolk to Bermuda today could be one fast passage, in the right boat. PassageWeather is no where near as ambitious as ClearPoint, but it seems well done. Your thoughts?

Posted by Ben E on February 6, 2008 12:33 PM

Comments

We have been using Passage Weather all through the last hurricane season ( which means DAILY) and one thing you can say about them is that their Carribbean coverage is spot on.

I also find that I can actually plan a passage knowing that for X amount of hours I can expect the wind to be from the East and then know that ( if they said it) that the wind will shift toward the North or whatever.

Jeez and its free...Gotta love it.

Posted by: Bob at February 6, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply

I checked out the site and only have one problem. They don't show you the frontal passages. This seems to be the norm with a lot of these free weather web site. I still don't think it's going to beat UGRIB. With UGRIB GRIB's you can import into a lot of different nav software and GRIB viewers.
Roy

Posted by: Roy at February 6, 2008 5:03 PM | Reply

Good tip, Ben. The site is nicely laid out. But, using a wireless (11MB) connection here in Malaysia it takes about five minutes to let the website step through all the images. It's quicker (about 1 minute) for me to download the zipped files ... plus you have them for future reference if, for example, you do the download just prior to unplugging from the Internet and setting off on a passage. But then, of course, I get the Grib files daily from Saildocs ... assuming the HF propagation cooperates.

Terry

Posted by: yachtvalhalla at February 6, 2008 7:04 PM | Reply

Thank you for your comments on PassageWeather...

In answer to the comments on the lack of frontal passages in our forecasts, I want to explain that all of our forecasts are computer generated, whereas fronts and frontal passages need a human to interpret and apply them, they cannot (with any accuracy) be computer generated...

We could have fronts in our forecasts, but then we would need a team of meteorologists working round the clock, which we don't have... and if we did, we'd have to pay them, and then we wouldn't be able to offer PassageWeather.com as a 100% free service...

As to the comments on PassageWeather not being as good as UGRIB, I just want to say that we are not in competition with UGRIB, in fact we're a totally different thing... apples and oranges... The 2 services work very well together, each with their own purpose... can you imagine Mom and Pop Cruiser sitting in an internet cafe in the Azores trying to install UGRIB, just to see what the wind is going to do?... UGRIB is great, I use it myself, but each system has their place...

(this message was sent back in February, but it never made it, I don't know why... so I sent it again, and then again... this is my fifth attempt, I hope it makes it this time... this comment system isn't very good, Ben)

Posted by: billreilly at August 7, 2008 10:52 AM | Reply

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