Expedition Navigation Software 
1 of 1- EVENSTAR
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Offline - Registered: 11/07/2016
- Posts: 3
Advice: MAPS, Weather, Tides & Currents, Sat Phone
I am new to Expedition. I have taken NorthU seminars and downloaded Will's book (would second other motions for a print copy). I am looking for advice regarding sources for charts (this year US, eventually Canada and Bermuda), weather GRIBS, and tide and current GRIBS (specifically Chesapeake Bay and North East US). My navigator has been very frustrated trying to find a good source for tides and currents for the A2N race that can be used with the Expedition routing functionality, so this is a key focus.
Our setup is Expedition run on a MacBook Air running parallels (backed up MS Surface Book). This computer is dedicated to this purpose, and lives at the nav station which is not terribly wet. Instruments are B&G Triton w/ Zeus2 networked MFD's: 9" at the nav station and 7" at helm which is used as an instrument display while racing. Communications are Iridium 9575 Extreme with sidekick from OCENS, and AT&T wireless via mobile phone hotspot and signal booster. Expedition will be used for routing, and navigation while racing, as well as tracking fleet via YB. I do not plan to use the Expedition for cruising with the family, but will use the much less powerful but adequate B&G Zeus2 functionality. Therefore data sources that can be leveraged across platforms is desirable.
- The B&G can use either Navionics or C-MAP charts, both of which I believe include tide and current data (quality?). The B&G can also sync with PredictWind to download weather GRIBS, as well as use the PredictWind weather routing functionality with my Polars uploaded to PredictWind (so computation happening at PW, not on Zeus).
- I believe I have read here that PW does not work with the sidekick, and therefore I am unsure if I can leverage it as a weather source when outside of mobile broadband coverage. Is this correct? Does anyone have experience with using PW w/ sidekick and 9575? Is Weathernet my only / best choice?
- If I can go with PW, they now bundle TideTech data if I upgrade to professional. From the TideTech website it is not apparent that they provide good tide and current data for coastal or nearshore north east US. Does anyone know if this is the case?
- It looks like NOAA provides plentiful tide and current data, as well as prediction tables, but I have not been able to find any information on how to import this data into Expedition, and if it can be utilized by the weather routing functionality. Does anyone have experience or insight here?
Any help or advice is most appreciated.
- Nick
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- Registered: 9/16/2015
- Posts: 2,740
Re: Advice: MAPS, Weather, Tides & Currents, Sat Phone
Charts:
For US waters, the free NOAA RNCs or ENCs. The choice between these is more user preference. For Bermuda and the Caribbean, you need commercial charts such as C-Map or NV-Verlag.
Weather:
Saildocs is very, very good. Also, look at the NOAA options in Exp, although this isn't always reliable. Great Circle and Predictwind are other options.
Currents:
Saildocs has RTOFS. Also see MyGrib in Exp and GMN for the HYCOM/NCOM options, which are generally better than RTOFS.
The NOAA tide data is included in Exp as well as some other low resolution tidal current models, see the tide settings page in Exp. Of course, this does not replace official NOAA data obtained from official NOAA sources.