Ocean Navigator Communications Newsletter #28

Weather At Sea: New Ways to Get Weather Information

Here's a little preview of a new product that should solve a common problem. Due to hit the streets in about two weeks (early April) is a product called WeatherNet from industry veteran Ocens, Inc. from Seattle. WeatherNet aims squarely at the problem of getting weather information (typically in large files) to a user using a slow speed connection (say, on a boat at sea - or in a plane - or over ham radio). Here's how it works.

First you'll need to buy the WeatherNet client software for $50 (reduced rates apply if you buy it along with one of Ocens' other products like WeatherStation or SeaStation). Included in the $50 purchase price is a one-time activation fee. Once the software is installed and activated, you'll see a list of about 5,000 different types of weather files you can download. The list is pretty extensive - in fact it's a little overwhelming. In addition to standard marine surface weather charts, it also includes 500 mb charts, near real-time buoy information, satellite imagery, text weather forecasts, and even weather charts for aviators. Each category is then broken down by geography - western North Atlantic, eastern North Pacific and so on.

From this list, you can create "batches" of files you're interested in. A batch might contain all charts relevant to your weekend cruise. A separate batch (you can have several) might have charts relevant to your trip to Bermuda. Once you have the batches set up, you can select a batch of files to download, and even choose which of the files in the batch you want to retrieve. For example, in your Bermuda-batch, you may decide to get all of the charts once a day in the morning, and then only a few updates in the afternoon.

After setting up your batches, and selecting your files, you'll need a way to connect to the Internet. WeatherNet has already been tested with Globalstar, Iridium, Inmarsat Mini-M, and Pactor III modems. It should also work with Inmarsat Fleet, and KVH TracNet. SeaWave has their own weather system that's very similar to WeatherNet and uses MaxSea to view downloaded files.

You'll pay between $0.10 and $0.75 per downloaded file. This reflects WeatherNet prices - airtime prices are not included. One of the features of WeatherNet is that each file has been compressed for tranmission over the airwaves. The idea is that the small charge per chart would be more than offset by the savings in airtime you'd otherwise pay to download a non-compressed chart. Other than this, there are no monthly charges incurred - you only pay for what you use.

Once the file has been downloaded, you'll need a separate viewer to open up the chart and see it on your screen. Ocens, of course, recommends their WeatherStation product to be used as an ehnanced viewer that can also manipulate the chart in several ways. Though in most versions of Windows, you can use the free Picture Viewer (in Windows XP) or the included Kodak Image Viewer (in most other Windows versions) to simply open the chart and view it.

SeaWave has a similar product bundled into their Navigator 2.0 software which has been out since last year. NOAA weather (both text and graphics) is available in compressed format for $0.95 to $1.95 per download. In addition, with SeaWave's MaxSea Weather, you'd get the ability to define your own geographical regions and download gridded binary (GRIB) weather for those regions. You can choose from wind, waves, sea surface temperature and five other data types. Smaller regions yield smaller files which ultimately yield smaller airtime bills. There is no per-file charge for the MaxSea Weather downloads. A simplified version of MaxSea is included with SeaWave service so you'll have something with which you can view the weather files.

It's getting easier and easier to get weather information at sea. Now if only we could do something about preventing bad weather to begin with . . .

Keep in touch.

- Dan Piltch
dpiltch@MarineComputer.com