Route a coastal race

The screen is in three parts, numbered in the order you work through them: 1 · Course, 2 · Boat, 3 · Route. On a phone they come one at a time and you switch between them with the row of buttons under the title bar.

1 · Course

Click the chart where the line starts. Click again for the finish. Both appear in the 1 · Course panel as Start and Finish, with their positions written out, and you can correct either by typing over the numbers.

For a real race course, keep clicking to add the marks in rounding order. Each mark gets a control for which side to leave it — port or starboard — and arrows to move it earlier or later in the order if you add one out of sequence.

Set the finish to a line rather than a point if the sailing instructions describe one. The routing then aims for the favoured end, which on the last leg is often worth more than anything else you do.

Fit chart re-centres the view on the whole course when you have scrolled away from it.

The top of the screen shows Direct, the great-circle distance, and Course, the distance through your marks. If Course is not roughly what you expect, a mark is in the wrong place or in the wrong order.

2 · Boat

Type into Search by boat name, sail number, or type. Your ORC certificate comes back with its VPP polar attached, which is the better basis for a route than a guess.

If your boat is not listed, switch the source to a pasted polar. It takes matrix CSV, TSV and .pol files, and Expedition or PredictWind angle-speed rows, and works out which it is being given.

A pasted polar is temporary unless you explicitly save it to your account. Saving makes it available to your boats and sails without exposing it in shared routes or to project members. See performance models.

3 · Route

Depart is at the top of the screen. Set it to the scheduled start.

Forecast fidelity and the time window are automatic. The route uses the strongest forecast data your plan includes, then derives the search resolution from that data and the course. Press Compute route.

The forecast has to be fetched and prepared first, which is the part that takes a moment. Once it has downloaded, computing again re-uses it and comes back quickly. Cancel stops a search that is taking longer than you want.

Open Advanced options only when the race requires them. This is where you set manoeuvre costs, draft and depth margin, performance percentage, wave preferences, legal sailing angles, wind limits, shoreline clearance, and keep-out areas. See Route constraints and preferences.

Reading the result

Every wind model available to your plan and course is computed, not just the one currently shown. The Model picker chooses which answer you are looking at. Left on Consensus, it shows the track the available models agree on and names which model that was. On a GFS-only plan, GFS is the only candidate.

Open the picker to step through the individual models. If GFS, ECMWF and HRRR all put you on the same side of the course, the call is easy. If they part company, the picker is where you find that out, and the start needs a hedge.

Racing in US waters you get two fine-grid models rather than one: HRRR and NAM cover the same 3 km footprint from different model cores, so when both see the sea breeze filling in the same way that is a stronger signal than either on its own — and when they disagree, the disagreement is about the weather rather than about the grid.

The panel gives you headings, true wind angle and speed at each step, and the sail changes down the legs.

Before accepting the answer, use Route stability to see whether small wind or boat-speed changes move it. The chart can also animate wind and current, time a line you draw under every model, and hide the routes for a clean weather view; see Use the route chart.

Sending it on

Export GPX loads into a chartplotter or nav software. Export CSV opens in a spreadsheet for the leg-by-leg numbers. The share link reopens the whole thing in a browser for whoever you send it to, without exposing your polar.