Navigation, Weather & Instruments
Routing, weather strategy and race instruments
Routing software has never been better, and it has never been easier to follow it off a cliff. A GRIB file is a model's best guess, not a promise about what will happen to your boat in the next six hours.
This section is about the gap between the screen and the sea. It covers weather strategy, routing software, polars, race instruments and real navigation: how to set up instruments properly, how to build a polar for the boat you actually sail, how far to trust the routing, what AIS tells you offshore and what it hides, and what to do when GPS cannot be trusted at all.
The aim is judgement. Software can calculate a route; it cannot decide whether the model has the timing of a front right, or whether a tidal gate at a headland matters more than the extra pressure offshore. Those decisions are made by the navigator, not the laptop.
I was navigator aboard Cabadah in the 1979 Fastnet, and navigator and tactician in the Rolex Middle Sea Race in 2015 and 2017. I learned astro navigation in the Royal Navy. The tools have changed out of all recognition since then. The job has not: know where you are, know what the weather is doing, and know when to stop believing the plan.
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