How do you macro-plan a cruise/season?

[flightlead404]

Interested in different view points.

By "macro-plan" I mean, lay out where you are going and a high level timetable, and monitor your progress.

For example, do you figure out you need to be around a cape, through a sea, or below a certain latitude by some such date based on historical weather information, then figure out how many 100's or 1,000's of miles away it is, and figure an average distance per day and then wander towards your destination making sure the last month isn't a 1,000 mile dash in marginal weather?

e.g. Lets say I'm in Charleston, SC and I know I want to winter in Curacao, and I know its 1,700 nm or whatever and there's things I want to see along the way. Whats your process?

[grantmc]

It is called a passage plan and is the first stage of most voyages. Things like the route, timing, safe harbours, points to avoid, likely weather conditions, crew needs, plan Bs etc. Many how to books are written on the topic, numerous articles on the net and cruising courses always dedicate considerable time to the topic.

[jack4566]

Pilot charts are what you want.
Visual Passage Planner is a piece of software that combines all the maps into interactive software.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by jack4566

Pilot charts are what you want.
Visual Passage Planner is a piece of software that combines all the maps into interactive software.

Visual Passage Planner gives you the big picture. But for the micro picture, the next week or so, many navigators use Grib files to give themselves a day by day vision of the weather over their planned voyaging area, for up to seven days. Then they advance their planned course each day based on the anticipated weather for that day.

Since weather forecasts more than four days are not very accurate you should re-plan every couple of days, getting new grib files via SSB or Sat phones. Stan Honey, probably the premiere navigator these days does not even plan out more than four days due to the inaccuracy of forecasts.

Actually OpenCPN will do this for you automatically, though I've never done it that way.

With this approach you can do for yourself what the weather routers charge you for.

[flightlead404]

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to start playing with an Open Cpn install over thanksgiving.

I have the Jimmy Cornell World Cruising Routes (5th ed) is the accompanying atlas a good addition?

[dougweibel]

Good info so far.

Beyond the mechanics of making sure you leave early enough to get where you need to be when you need to be there, there is a lot of finesse in making a season work out in an optimal way. I have written down and then erased several suggestions because for each some counter argument has popped into my head. I'll just say it has taken us a while to learn some lessons about season planning, and I'm sure we have many left to learn. Those lessons make our planning work out in a more enjoyable way for us, but you may value completely different things so may want to make different choices.

Focus your initial efforts on safety, and comfort during passages. You will learn over time how to optimize your planning to get the most of whatever you enjoy, be that visiting more places or spending longer times in one spot, etc.