Page Title

Text Box: Boat/Wind Direction This window gives a depiction of the boat direction and wind direction in a fixed coordinate system with north to the top of the figure. Waypoint Information Distance and bearing to waypoint (destination) are given. Note you can compare this direction to the true direction the boat is making. VMG (velocity made good ) is also provided. Angle of Heel This window shows the heel of the boat when viewed from behind. The boat can be made to sail more upright by releasing the sail or by taking a reef in the sail. The boat sails slower at high angles of heel due to a loss of projected sail area on the wind and to increased drag effects because of a loss of hydrodynamics. Sails Group This group of checkboxes allows for sail configuration. Spinnaker can be set for downwind sailing. Reefs can be set to reduce sail area. Sails can be lowered for motoring or stopping. Current will still move boat. Weather Maps This window provides a graphical depiction of winds, temperature, pressure, clouds and precipitation using the option boxes listed below. The area of interest can be zoomed using a rubber box. To see a bigger picture. Click the weather map. Winds Vectors are displayed over a shaded map where warmer colors indicate higher wind speeds. The winds as depicted are actual at a degraded resolution. Actual winds used in the simulation are at twice the density shown here. The full resolution can be seen over the background map using the show winds option. Clouds Clouds are shown in a shaded format with grey, white and blue indicating 50%, 70% and 80% cloud cover. Precipitation is indicated by green contours. Pressure Contours of pressure are given. Contour interval is 4 mb. This is useful for identifying weather conditions. Currents Seasonal ocean currents are indicated as vectors. The tail of the vector is the circle. The air temperature is indcated by the color shading. The temperature field is updated daily.