TideRoute Sailing

TideRoute Sailing plans and runs your passages, under sail or under power: routing, multi-model GRIB, current and tide, ORC polars, marine charts. Free to start.

THE ROUTING, AND WHY IT IS FASTER
Draw your route, pick a departure time, run the calculation. The isochrone algorithm looks for the fastest track from your polar, the wind, the swell, the current, the day/night cycle and your motoring rules, while clearing the coast.

The calculation advances by successive fronts, discarding at each step the positions with no future. A classic router keeps, per sector, only the one furthest from the start. Upwind, that criterion turns against you: the tack that gains towards the mark is not the one that goes furthest away. It gets discarded, and the route commits to a long losing board. Here each front keeps both — the most advanced positions and the closest to the finish. The winning tack is never thrown away.

Measured on Groix-Ouessant, same GRIB and same polar, 100 % sailing: 16 h 57 for 100 miles, against 20 h 40 for 152 miles on a well-established consumer router. Three hours forty less, 18 %. The gap comes from the algorithm, not from the engine.

AND FOR MOTORBOATS
Raise the "Motor below" setting above any speed under sail and enter your motoring speed: the routing becomes a power calculation, current, tide, swell and coastline included. Against a 5-knot tidal race, an 8-knot motor cruiser stakes its day on the time of passage.

THE CURRENT IS PART OF THE CALCULATION
Current is not a decorative overlay: it enters the routing. Useful wind is taken in the water frame, and speed over ground follows.
• From the Baltic to the Mediterranean, 412 current areas of at least 1 knot, surveyed over a full spring cycle
• Fine mesh where current makes the day: our own 100 m model on the English coast, Ifremer 250 m in Brittany and the Channel, BSH on the Elbe and the Belts, Copernicus Marine elsewhere
• Tide computed on board: heights, high and low waters, at any date, with no network
• Best departure time: a sweep compares the departures in your window and keeps the one that passes the races at the right moment

WEATHER AND MODELS
• ECMWF and GFS offshore, up to 10 and 16 days
• AROME 1.3 km and ARPEGE 0.1° (Meteo-France), ICON-EU 7 km and ICON-D2 2.2 km (DWD)
• Swell and period, gusts, pressure, temperature, cloud, rain, CAPE
• The finest model for the area is offered; the GRIB follows the extent of your route

THE SOLENT, MODELLED FOR ITSELF
General-purpose current sources work on a 1.5 km grid — three cells across a channel three miles wide. We built our own: a hydrodynamic model of the Solent, the Isle of Wight, Hurst and the Needles on a 100 m mesh. Developed with AI assistance, from open data, checked against published tide gauge records. Harmonic tide: currents for any date, months ahead.

YOUR POLAR, MEASURED UNDER WAY
Start from the monohull and multihull library, from the ORC database — thousands of certified boats — or from your own CSV and .pol files.

Then build your own at sea, on its own. The workshop fills an angle / wind-strength grid while you sail: it waits for a settled state, discards the minutes after a manoeuvre and wind outside the range, smooths the swell. At a 1-knot step and up to 40, the grid gets fine. Cells you never sailed stay empty rather than invented.

And that is when it becomes a tuning tool. Your speed is compared with YOUR boat's polar — not the builder's, not a sister-ship's. 96 % upwind, you are still searching; 103 %, you have the right trim. A day at 90 % everywhere with no weather reason, and you know where to look: tired sail, propeller, fouled hull.

FREE AND PREMIUM
GFS wind routing is free, without limit. The subscription adds current, tide, swell and the high-resolution models. Free trial on first launch.

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