Orca core and maps, what do you think?

[bergius]

Orca just released their weather routing feature: https://getorca.com/blog/orca_sail_routing/

Generally seems to do the job, though I’m not so keen on how the suggested upwind route from Bornholm in this one cuts through the Traffic Separation Scheme:

[sailingharry]

Wow, a routing feature that not only keeps you from running aground, but it shows you when to tack?! That's pretty slick.

Is that suggested track on your screen aspirational, or is it based on your actual vessels performance? Few boats can actually track through a tacking angle of 80° as shown on your route. If you can achieve that, I am certainly impressed! Most of us cruisers can't meet that with course steered, much less after factoring in leeway. 90° is usually a high bar.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

Wow, a routing feature that not only keeps you from running aground, but it shows you when to tack?! That's pretty slick.

Is that suggested track on your screen aspirational, or is it based on your actual vessels performance? Few boats can actually track through a tacking angle of 80° as shown on your route. If you can achieve that, I am certainly impressed! Most of us cruisers can't meet that with course steered, much less after factoring in leeway. 90° is usually a high bar.

The screen dump shows angles greater than 99 degrees, not smaller

PredictWind has been doing all this for many, many years.

[sailingharry]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

The screen dump shows angles greater than 99 degrees, not smaller

PredictWind has been doing all this for many, many years.

Hm..... perhaps it's a question of definition. The lines are closer to a straight line, and further from a zig zag. The inside of the corner is closer to 100 degrees than 90, but a 100 degree inside corner is 180-100, or 80 degree tacking angle.


I've never used PredictWind, other than some armchair practice. My passage making has been as crew, and mostly many years ago (almost all before at-sea internet, and much of it before GPS). But that sounds slick.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

The screen dump shows angles greater than 99 degrees, not smaller

PredictWind has been doing all this for many, many years.

Orca does that according to your boat polar which if not existing will be created while sailing through orca core. 2nd it does that automatically, just mark with the finger your waypoint and click navigate to and you get your weather, wave and tide heights along the route and uses the weather and your boat polar to create the best route.
All integrated, 2 clicks and you have it.
Waiting for the new orca core with radar connection and support...even if you don't like orca, the core delivers you for 500Euro a high precision 10hz GPS compass and gyro sensor and a heading sensor data into your nmea 2000 network...a B&G or raymarine only the heading sensor needed for doppler and marpa is 400bucks+...only for that its already a good deal.

With predict wind you have to first create the route, then do weather routing based on more or less fixed polars, then need to load it into navionics. Small change do all again.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

The screen dump shows angles greater than 99 degrees, not smaller

PredictWind has been doing all this for many, many years.

Orca does that according to your boat polar which if not existing will be created while sailing through orca core. 2nd it does that automatically, just mark with the finger your waypoint and click navigate too and you get your weather, wave and tide heights along the route and uses the weather and your boat polar to create the best route.

With predict wind you have to first create the route, then do weather routing based on more or less fixed polars, then need to load it into navionics or onto chartplotter. Small change do all again. In orca move the waypoint and all is done automatically and data shown along the route, really cool. Yes you have evefything seperated for years but fully integrated no...

[CaptainRivet]

Weather is from windy so not as "accurate" as predict wind. But well weather forecast lately also on predivt wind only rough eatimate anyhow. Experienced that on last atlantic crossing 2 month ago...fitted roughly but wind was often very off, only big weather pattern fitted.
So windy is actually ok too as similar on that level.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

Hm..... perhaps it's a question of definition. The lines are closer to a straight line, and further from a zig zag. The inside of the corner is closer to 100 degrees than 90, but a 100 degree inside corner is 180-100, or 80 degree tacking angle.


I've never used PredictWind, other than some armchair practice. My passage making has been as crew, and mostly many years ago (almost all before at-sea internet, and much of it before GPS). But that sounds slick.

Just look on the graphic route and you see the tack angle is greater then 90, assume 100-110 degrees and thats typical tack angle for a good mono.

[fourlyons]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

Hm..... perhaps it's a question of definition. The lines are closer to a straight line, and further from a zig zag. The inside of the corner is closer to 100 degrees than 90, but a 100 degree inside corner is 180-100, or 80 degree tacking angle.


I've never used PredictWind, other than some armchair practice. My passage making has been as crew, and mostly many years ago (almost all before at-sea internet, and much of it before GPS). But that sounds slick.

Sailingharry, my response was the same as yours. I learned to think of those tacks as (roughly) 80 deg tacks because the boat is making an 80 deg course change from one tack to the other, not 100 deg. My experience agrees with yours, that screen shot shows a very weatherly cruising boat. Or a helpful current.

[fourlyons]

Originally Posted by CaptainRivet

Just look on the graphic route and you see the tack angle is greater then 90, assume 100-110 degrees and thats typical tack angle for a good mono.

By this logic, the screen shot for a square rigged ship (135 deg tacking angle) would show fewer miles sailed over the ground than the mono. That doesn't make sense.

[Sailorman97]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

The screen dump shows angles greater than 99 degrees, not smaller

PredictWind has been doing all this for many, many years.

It shows 80 degree tacking angles. Tacking angles are about course made good to the wind and that graphic shows the boat to be pretty high performance, deep keel and able to sail very close to the wind and to actually sail and hold that course.

Tacking angles are about the course change required to go onto the other tack and sail to the wind.

Depending on the sea state I can point those angles but I could never sail them. My keel is not deep enough, too much leeway.

[s/v Jedi]

Sure, what do I know about angles… only had 9 years of trigonometry

[bergius]

Originally Posted by Sailorman97

Depending on the sea state I can point those angles but I could never sail them. My keel is not deep enough, too much leeway.

There are two ways to get polars into Orca for weather routing: either import from the ORC database, or let Orca learn your sailing behaviour.

Since our boat can’t be found from ORC, and we can’t import custom polars, this should be based on its learning behaviour.

We installed Orca Core this winter, so all sailing we’ve done with it has been with new sails and in flat water on the lakes around Berlin. I’m sure the tacking angles become less ambitious once we get some data from at sea

[Sailorman97]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Sure, what do I know about angles… only had 9 years of trigonometry

Great you had 9 yrs of trig. So what your still wrong. Trigonometry has no roll here at all.

So tell us how many years of racing sailboats and studying tacking angles because that is in fact what we are talking about not trigonometry which does not play into this conversation at all.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Sailorman97

Great you had 9 yrs of trig. So what your still wrong. Trigonometry has no roll here at all.

So tell us how many years of racing sailboats and studying tacking angles because that is in fact what we are talking about not trigonometry which does not play into this conversation at all.

Most people know what a 90 degree angle is and what an 80 degree angle is and they can tell the difference. That requires zero sailing experience. On sailing, I am doing that for more than 50 years incl. 10 years Laser competition circuit.