Wind Barbs in a route

chipkaupp

In the attached image in a planning route it shows an option for the wind barbs. I don't understand the three options. Shouldn't the options be "to" and "from" as in the wind is blowing "to" or the wind is blowing "from"? The "north up" does not always coincide with the way the particles are moving but seems to be the closest. Could you explain these three options?

It would be extremely helpful if the little white dot on a route was a wind pointer instead. I use an web site "DeepZoom" that has that feature. But they only use the GFS weather model.

Thank You
Chip
Sailing the Atlantic and the Caribbean seas

idefix37

@chipkaupp
Hi,
These options are the wind reference direction. Note there are no wind barbs for boats, they are displayed only for aircrafts.

For sailing use North up. It is the normal way and with this setting the wind direction is referring to the North direction.

Left to right (and Bottom to top) are mainly used by aviators. These options mean that the wind reference direction is the boat course as if you were moving from left to right (or bottom to top) of your screen. So in the planner diagram it is the “relative true wind” you observe from the boat (Note it is not the relative wind resulting from the true wind and the boat speed).

See this post for more details if you need.

Are these 2 options also useful for sailing? They can be, as they directly indicate the true wind angle relative to the boat's course, which is very useful for planning a close-hauled route.
In the following example, on the map the wind reference direction is North up as usual, but in the diagram it is Left to right

Both wind directions are identical but in a different frame of reference!