Suggestions for Improving "Distance & Planning" – From a Merchant Captain's Perspective

Maontherox

Hello everyone,

I'm a merchant vessel captain with over 20 years of experience at sea, navigating across oceans and handling the challenges of routing in all sorts of weather and sea conditions. First of all, let me thank the Windy team and the community for developing such a powerful and intuitive platform, an increasingly valuable tool not only for recreational users but also for professional seafarers like myself.

After extensively using the "Distance & Planning" feature, I'd like to suggest a couple of improvements that could significantly enhance its usefulness, especially for long-distance and professional route planning.

Waypoint-Specific Speed Settings
Currently, the planning tool allows setting a fixed speed for the entire route. However, in real-world navigation, vessel speed often varies from waypoint to waypoint, depending on local weather and sea conditions, traffic separation schemes, port approaches, etc.
Allowing users to adjust speed per leg (between waypoints) would offer a far more realistic and flexible planning experience, especially useful when anticipating slower steaming in rough seas or accelerating with favorable winds.
Integration with the Ocean Currents Layer
Another vital factor affecting vessel routing is ocean currents. Being able to interface the route planner with the currents layer would improve both ETA predictions and fuel efficiency analysis. Even a modest current can significantly impact voyage time and consumption over long distances.

These two features, variable speed inputs and current layer integration, would bring the "Distance & Planning" tool closer to real-world professional standards, making it more accurate and valuable for all types of mariners.

I'd love to hear thoughts from fellow users and the Windy team. Thanks again for the excellent work!

Fair winds,
Captain Maurizio

Jari Sochorová

@Maontherox Hello, thank you for your suggestions to improve the Distance and Planning feature. I've forwarded your feedback to the Windy team, and we'll see if they can be implemented. We're happy to hear that our app is useful to you. Fair winds. Jari

idefix37

@Maontherox
Hi Capt’n,
Your suggestions would be really useful to improve the Route planner:

Having the ability to specify the speed for each leg would indeed be a real step forward.
Adding the influence of current on the expected speed (SOG) would perhaps be more difficult to implement.

I would add another improvement:

Having the ability to use regional models and not only the ECMWF model. For example, using high-resolution models would allow sea breezes to be taken into account.

Maontherox

@idefix37 Hello,
Thank you for your explanations. Regarding your second point (currents), simply understanding the intensity and direction of the current would be enough. I believe that even just this addition would be a significant step forward for trip planning. Imagine being able to plan based on current information and your engine's RPMs – this would result in a huge advantage in terms of performance and fuel consumption.