The OP has come to the completely uninformed conclusion that paying to get weather forecasts offshore is a waste and wants people to support his opinion. There are two reasons that this might be true. He can't afford the
service and wants to feel better about that, or he doesn't understand how to use it and will feel better if he can convince himself that it has no real value and he isn't missing anything. Or maybe he's just a troll stirring the pot for entertainment.
As an experienced offshore
passage maker and delivery
captain, I update my weather information every 12 hours and evaluate my
route decisions with each new
forecast. The idea that this information is somehow not "actionable" is just hooey.
The focus of this thread has been all about storms and dangerous weather, and that certainly can be a factor, but what about calms and
head winds? I far more often adjust my
route to get MORE wind, or wind from a better direction.
Just as an example: Knowing days ahead of time a front is going to pass through, exactly WHEN, and the wind direction shift that will accompany it is EXTREMELY valuable information to the knowledgable sailor. It can make a HUGE difference in the
passage time by allowing me to know when it makes the best strategic sense to tack or gybe. If the value of advance knowledge of a 150 degree wind shift is
lost on you, then there isn't much I can do to convince you otherwise, and I am not going to try.
The idea that the only weather information that has value is what you can SEE is just wrong.