Am I doing this right

[Andifreed]

I was working up a sailing plan for a trip a couple of weeks from now. So I laid the desired courses and click on the tidal current along the route and tides at shallow points.

First - I always had to change the date from the current date to the proposed date.
Second - I had to use measure tool to calculate the current triangle which doesn't leave an audit trail.
Third - I had to use a different app to store the plan (spread sheet).
Finally - I would have to repeat those three steps if I wanted to play what if games -- Trying to avoid a negative tide depth at departure/arrival versus max flood through the straight.

So am I doing this wrong? Looking through the documentation I see reference to "Chart Work" but it was not on the list of plugins nor does google/sourceforge find it.

[PjotrC]

Right, I think you definitely ask the right questions. It is surprisingly hard to find support for basic passage planning in otherwise very advanced nav software...

Standard OCPN will help you a bit in your first and final step. True, it does not store the departure date/time with the route, but if you are planning some weeks from now, this is usually not so much in a hurry. You may find it a little easier to enter ">" as departure time (followed by "Enter" key), then just edit the part of date/time you want changed and hit "Enter" key again to play what-if scenarios.

The tide state can be seen in the route plan, either at all waypoints - relative to the single chosen tide station, or - at many selected tide stations, different per each waypoint. Just have a look at the user's manual section about routes (hint: enable the tides/currents and look at what happens if you have waypoints named as "@~~xxxxx", e.g "@~~DOVER"). I agree that similar information should be shown about tidal currents, but I simply had no time to implement this before putting out to sea last year... so this functionality exists only with GRIB data in a limited edition of OCPN...

For an example view you might look at the Forums - Post 1206696">-IRJDSUNE9932123321222xxeww-screenshot-IRJDSUNE9932123321222xxeww-here-IRJDSUNE9932123321222xxeww- e.g. in the weather routing thread.

I think someone was working on the capability to export route plan to a spreadsheet file, don't know the current status.

Good luck in your planned trip!

PS. I seem to have trouble properly including the link... looks good on preview, but fails in real access... what I meant is in my post at page #5 of weather routing thread.

[nohal]

BTW, I'm currently working on making this usable by humans. It will appear in some of the next 3.3 betas...

Pavel

[Andifreed]

Thanks

I see the current info when I move the waypoints from the bouys or ranged-points to the tidal information icons on the right button popup. But put them back so the plan can be executed with eye balls.

I got side tracked by http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...-97251-10.html, which seemed to imply that I shouldn't bother. But by the end of the thread, it looks like I should plot the CTS track in addition to the DL track.