{"id":46055,"date":"2026-08-26T15:25:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T15:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/?p=46055"},"modified":"2026-08-26T16:40:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T16:40:43","slug":"further-thoughts-on-using-a-weather-router-on-passages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/2026\/08\/further-thoughts-on-using-a-weather-router-on-passages\/","title":{"rendered":"Further Thoughts on Using a Weather Router on Passages"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hi George,<\/div>\n
Written for another venue, but I thought this might be of interest. Dick<\/div>\n
\n

Weather router suggestion<\/p>\n

My first experience with a weather router was with Herb Hilgenberg, Southbound II, when he gave weather and routing suggestions. On passage, I would never miss his 1600 afternoon talks with passage-making vessels all over the North Atlantic and benefited greatly from his guidance. Further, his comments on the weather and how he expected it to unfold in the ensuing days was an excellent seminar in forecasting for sailboats.<\/p>\n

Jump ahead a couple of decades and we were returning from Europe via the northern route: Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and fetching up on Newfoundland. Around Greenland we again used a router, in part as he could report ice conditions as well as weather.<\/p>\n

Let your router know about your boat and your preferences, particularly a realist daily run. For example: we have no problem sailing downwind in over 20kn and, if faced with 20+kn on the nose while still days away from destination, we are likely to heave to till the front passes.<\/p>\n

As with Herb, I suggest appreciating the weather router as a training exercise. First, use all the data available to forecast the weather out 3-4 days. Then do the routing and keep an eye on what might occur if the forecast does not unfold as predicted.<\/p>\n

Then, look at the suggestions coming from your router with particular attention to where discrepancies exist. Figure out why those discrepancies exist. \u201cIs the router overly concerned at keeping you in winds below 20kn, for example. Or perhaps keeping you from headwinds. Or does he\/she see winds as being more potent than you personally predicted.<\/p>\n

Do not hesitate to ask your router why discrepancies exist and why he\/she made the choices where these differences exist. When leaving Iceland with a really nice weather window, our router warned us that the forecast low was going to give as a fine beam reach, but if the low, still days away, tracked farther south, it would likely give us some nasty headwinds. In my routing preparation, I had not considered that possibility.<\/p>\n

Another suggestion: It is very helpful to write everything down. I believe we all way over-estimate our memory. With that in mind, write everything down. Make a page for every day out a week. Include all aspects of the trip: wind speed and direction, likely miles accrued, rain\/squalls etc., barometer forecast (is the front approaching sooner than expected), etc.<\/p>\n

With your own personal forecast knowledge, you will be in a much better position to respond to inevitable changes than if blindly following someone else\u2019s recipe for the passage. This is particularly the case if you lose contact with the router when offshore.<\/p>\n

My best, Dick Stevenson, s\/v Alchemy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi George, Written for another venue, but I thought this might be of interest. Dick Weather router suggestion My first experience with a weather router was with Herb Hilgenberg, Southbound II, when he gave weather and routing suggestions. On passage, I would never miss his 1600 afternoon talks with passage-making vessels all over the North Atlantic and benefited greatly from his guidance. Further, his comments on the weather and how he expected it to unfold in the ensuing days was an excellent seminar in forecasting for sailboats. Jump ahead a couple of decades and we were returning from Europe via the northern route: Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and fetching up on Newfoundland. Around Greenland we again used a router, in part as he could report ice conditions as well as weather. Let your router know about your boat and your preferences, particularly a realist daily run. For example: we have no problem sailing downwind in over 20kn and, if faced with 20+kn on the nose while still days away from destination, we are likely to heave to till the front passes. As with Herb, I suggest appreciating the weather router as a training exercise. First, use all the data available to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,1877],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46056,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46055\/revisions\/46056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}