Using FastSeas.com for Routing

Using fastseas.com for weather routing

We're sailing Eximius up to Lake Worth this weekend and using fastseas.com for weather routing for the first time (Paid Subscription) 

First learnt about fastseas.com from a sailing vlog on YouTube. Looked pretty interesting so tried it out first as a freebie account but quickly upgraded to a paid subscription.

So, in preparation for our trip to Lake Worth here's what I did.

Once logged in, I created a new route with a start and finish position. Both of those have to be on the water! Duh. In this case I setup a start that was 3 miles off of the Hillsboro Inlet. Chose that as we need to pump out beyond the 3 mile limit before arriving at lake worth for a few days stay.

I set the parameters for the wind speed at which I would turn on the engine and the ideal wind direction off of the bow. With all of parameters set. I chose the Start date and time then just click on the Calculate Route. A few seconds later I got the image shown above. The yellow line shows the recommended route that also includes wind direction and speed during the trip and it includes the current conditions along the route.

If I play the time line, the route is shown in action as the time passes our departure time and our position along the route as time passes. 

On this particular trip, with the weather forecast  4 days out, the route shows us moving towards the coast and tacking to make the best speed with the wind at the time of transit.

This is good, but it shows the route on the computer and I would really like it to be shown on my chart plotter - good news is that it's doable!

Step one (after establishing the route) is to download the data as a file format that suits Garmin's Home Port software. Most of the download options work.

Now that I have it downloaded, opening homeport I can import the route

Selecting the downloaded file and clicking on Open, imports the route data into homeport

Now to view the route in homeport

Now the route is shown in Home port, all of the route waypoints are displayed.

Next I need to copy them to a Micro SD Chip to transfer them to my Garmin 746xs Chartplotter on the boat. 

In practice, I would do all of this on the morning of the trip so that it is based upon the most up to date weather forecast.

Right clicking on the Route name within my collection in HomePort gives the option to 'Send To'. I select Device and the empty data SD chip.

Clicking on 'OK' copies the route data to the chip.

Now all we need do is to import the data into the chart plotter. 

On the boat, we insert the chip and import the data.

Now we have the route in our chart plotter and can simply instruct the chartplotter to follow the route, it will show us when we need to turn in order to stay en-route.

This is totally cool! Obviously, it's most accurate the closer the route is calculated to the departure time. 

I figure it takes all of 5 minutes to prep the chip from the moment I click on 'Calculate Route' till the data is uploaded to the chart plotter.

Hope you found this useful, please leave a comment and any questions you have, happy to answer them. As long as they are sailing or boat owner related :)

See you on the water.

Here's a link to another post on this subject: https://www.sailingeximius.com/2021/05/routing-around-crunchy-bits.html