The phone computes weather routes itself, from the boat's position, on the forecast it holds. No connection is needed once the weather is on board. You choose where to go; the app works out how hard to search and how far ahead to look.
Before you start
You need three things:
- A course. A waypoint or a route on the chart. See Drop waypoints and build a route.
- A position. From the phone's GPS or the boat's instruments.
- Weather to route on. See Get weather for routing.
And a polar for your boat, under Boat › Polars.
Route
- Open the router. On the chart, tap Wx, then the Route tab. On a project, tap Route this project before you sail, or Reroute from here while you sail. In the cockpit without a project, the Route tab in the bottom bar is the router.
- Choose a course. Under Route, open Course. It starts on Choose a route or waypoint. Routes are listed with their number of points, waypoints as To and the waypoint's name. A project's course is picked for you. When a race course is set, it is used instead and the row reads Race course.
- Choose where to compute. Under Solver, On this device solves on the phone. Server sends the request to Offwind's servers, which needs a connection and a boat with its polar chosen.
- Read the effort line. Under the course, one line says how the solve will run, for example Solves at Standard effort over 48 h of forecast, from the course length and your plan. There is nothing to set.
- Tap Route from here, now. It is pinned at the bottom of the screen.
When the button is greyed out, the line above it says why: Needs a course or Needs a position fix.
While it runs
The Progress panel shows what the router is doing and a bar for each strategy it tries. The button becomes Cancel; slide it to stop, and the work so far is lost.
If the router turns the request down, a Refused panel says why. If it fails, Not computed says why.
Effort and forecast window
The router always uses the strongest effort your plan allows: Preview, Standard, Precision or All-out. On the phone, heat, Low Power Mode and the charger setting can bring it down a step; it never refuses to run because of them.
The forecast window comes from the length of the course that is left, with a margin, at least a day and no more than your plan allows.
Offline readiness
Above the course, Offline readiness lists what the solve will use on the phone, for example Weather — Ready through a date, or Polar — Stored on device. A missing routing pack or polar shows here first.
Limits
Waypoints between the start and the finish of a chosen route are kept to starboard. For a race course with rounding sides, use the race's course.
A route is only as long as the forecast. When the boat would arrive after the forecast ends, the result says Beyond the held forecast.