Fastseas - anyone has used it?

[gauvins]

Starting to plan North Atlantic passage, I was searching for routing advice and came across Fastseas, a weather routing site.

Impressive at first glance. Does it work in practice? (I like the idea of receiving a list of waypoints, each day, instead of a grib). Or is there no comparison with a professional routing service.

[ub1]

I recently used fast seas for a trip from florida to Rhode Island. I used it with a garmin inreach. It was very useful and comforting to have daily weather and helpful routing suggestions. Be very careful and totally honest about setting up the polar performance of your vessel, probably should use the advanced method. Creator of the program was very helpful and answered email quickly. I was correct on my downwind sailing polar and routing and weather was dead on. On my upwind sailing polar I placed my pointing ability to high and that skewed the routing while the wind was ahead. If you have time, get it and spend some time sailing with it to ensure sailing polar is correct. I used 4 positions per day because thats all that fit in an inreach email. More can be requested. A bit frustrating that the first position is your position and weather, which I already know. So in reality you get 3 positions. Overall a great program which I enjoy and appreciate using. Happy sailing!

[AA3JY]

Yes..used it on an offshore trip from Brunswick, Ga. to Beaufort, NC..was bit optimistic in transiting time...

[Paul L]

I've used Fastseas as part of passage planning for many passages. It has a great feature that lets you start your passage on a given day and the next following days for a week. This is really helpful in picking what day you should leave. It lists how much beating, motoring and high winds for assuming a start on each.

I often turn off the current inclusion, as if you aren't in the axis of the Gulf Stream or sumilar, the current predictions are generally very poor - just adding error to the proposed course onto GFS wind prediction error.

I never bother to rerun it when actually on passage. I am a much better judge of the actual conditions offshore and how they affect my boat than the models.

One feature that would really improve Fastseas would be if they allowed an intermediate point along with the start and finish. On many passages you need to bias the course one side or another to deal with issues like possibly being headed as you approach the finish, or avoiding areas that have fish boat congestion, or a host of other reasons.

All in all its a good, easy to use tool.

[Symphony]

I have used FastSeas in conjunction with my InReach. I send a message from my InReach to FastSeas as I travel with the parameters of my route planning - mostly I set how far between steering waypoints.
I get back not only steering waypoints but also wind forecast (direction and speed) for each waypoint. I get a sense of the current too. Very helpful.
I get a new route planned at least daily, and I use the steering data and wind forecast only a day or so ahead - much more reliable this way, and the route is dynamic as I adjust constantly.
If there is a lot of frontal activity then I do a lot of route requests since the WindyTY or PredictWind models cannot forecast well in such conditions. Every time a front rolls through I run the model again.

[TheOffice]

I have done two offshore races with Fastseas and expedition. Both came up with similar routes. Took a third and a first!

[mikedefieslife]

Yep use it often. I was hoping weather routing in OpenCPN would be a useful alternative, but it’s not nearly a easy to use, understand, and get quick overviews of proposed dates and routes.

[andreas.mehlin]

when using Fastseas underway....how do you plot the suggested route? Is there a software? Or do u just plot it with the waypoints into your GPS chart plotter?

How much information is received in one message? How many wind direction and wind strength positions can you receive in one message? For example...3 days...4 hours between each...received in. how many messages?

Do you pay (in reach fee) per received message or only per sent message?

[svninkasi]

I personally have used fastseas for several big trips. The last trip was the biggest and we leaned on the product with everything we had.

Bocas del Toro nonstop to Florida keys.
1600 miles
No motor in the boat
Amel maramu 46

I did ALOT of research and set the polar conservative.

The trip took 11 days

I used the service with an iridium go.
We updated the route every 6 hours(just for something to do on shift)

Its easy with iridium, being that the reply email will include one of a few file types you can then save to a micro Sd card and put it into ur chart plotter and it will load the route. B&g liked a .gpx file I believe.

Long story short, every time we tried to outsmart fastseas and get off on a course we thought would be faster we regretted it and fastseas had accounted for future changes ect. And sets you up for them. We did this trip early February to give you an idea of timing.

I would recommend the service to anyone!

When beating we needed to change the polar a bit, an email latter and it was taken care of by the creator. Cant say thanks enough! Awesome product !

Sorry for the iPhone mistakes.

[svninkasi]

Also you can set the comfort levels for routing and max wind gust and points of sail!

[Symphony]

InReach has various service levels, from simple per message fee to unlimited monthly. I have a subscription where I can turn on a month then off again, unlimited messages.

[mikedefieslife]

Originally Posted by andreas.mehlin

when using Fastseas underway....how do you plot the suggested route? Is there a software? Or do u just plot it with the waypoints into your GPS chart plotter?

How much information is received in one message? How many wind direction and wind strength positions can you receive in one message? For example...3 days...4 hours between each...received in. how many messages?

Do you pay (in reach fee) per received message or only per sent message?

You don't plot a route. That is what the software is for. You tell it where you are starting from and where you want to end up. It then works out the best route for the weather conditions based on your polar.

[andreas.mehlin]

Originally Posted by mikedefieslife

You don't plot a route. That is what the software is for. You tell it where you are starting from and where you want to end up. It then works out the best route for the weather conditions based on your polar.

I think u misunderstood me....
I know what weather routing is....but to get is visable I need to plot it....

[mikedefieslife]

You can download the KLM/GPX of the proposed route and import that into a chart plotter or OpenCPN etc..