Manual

This is the reference. If you want the short version of the idea, read the guide instead. If something here does not match what you see on screen, trust the screen and tell us.

1. Set your boat up first. Nothing works properly until you do.

Every read in this app is scored against your limits. Until you set them, you are getting a boat-type preset, which is a reasonable guess and nothing more. Go to Settings, then Boat.

• Name and type. The type sets sensible starting thresholds. A kayak and a 53 ft flybridge should never get the same answer from the same forecast.
• Length, beam, draft. Length drives the ride assessment: a 2 ft sea is nothing on a 53 footer and a wet ride on a 21 footer. Draft drives the under-keel warnings in a briefing.
• Cruising speed, in KNOTS.This sets every arrival time in every briefing, and each leg’s forecast is read at the time you actually get there, so an error here moves the weather you are shown. The field tells you what your number is in mph as you type, because 21 mph and 21 knots are not the same boat.
• Your limits. Wind, seas, and visibility, each with a GO level and a CAUTION level. Set them to what YOU are willing to be out in, not to what the boat can survive.

2. The verdict

GO, CAUTION, or NO-GO, scored against the limits you just set. Underneath it is the summary: what kind of day it is and, when the call is not GO, exactly what drove it, with the actual reading against your own limit and the NWS sentence it came from. That last part matters. A verdict you cannot check against NOAA is one you eventually learn to override.

• Decision factors list every signal we scored. A factor marked Advisory informs the read but can never force a NO-GO on its own.
• Why is this different from my other weather app? Tap it. It names the specific reason our call differs from the raw numbers, which is usually your limits, the gust rather than the average, or something a wind number does not carry.

3. The conditions map

The water around you, tinted against your own limits. Green is inside them, amber is close, red is beyond. This is the one screen no other weather app can draw, because no other app knows your boat.

• Drag the slider under the map to run the whole field forward up to 48 hours. This is how you find a window: scrub until the red goes away.
• It shows wind and seas only. It cannot see lightning, fog, or a marine warning. A green map on a day with a thunderstorm watch is not a contradiction; read the verdict above it for those.
• Only water is tinted. Land is left alone, so the color traces where you can actually go.

4. Planning a cruise

Plan a cruise breaks a route into legs and tells you what you will find on each one at the time you get there, not what it is doing now.

• Say it in a sentence.“Leaving Annapolis Saturday morning for Cape May” fills in the route and the departure time. Always check what it filled in: it names places, and we resolve them, but it can misread you.
• Or type each stop.Suggestions come from about 98,000 maritime places across the US coast, the Great Lakes, the Bahamas, Bermuda, the BVI and Turks & Caicos, plus towns, marinas and zip codes. If two places share a name, you pick, we do not guess.
• Use where I am is on every field, departure and destination both. You might be running home as easily as away from it.
• Your start is never assumed. Your home port is offered as a shortcut, never filled in for you. You might be in New Jersey with the boat kept in Annapolis.

5. The departure briefing

The core deliverable. It opens with a summary of the day, then the call, then the reason, then the run leg by leg with time windows, expected conditions, and the ride you should expect on each one. Below that: hazards along the route, a fuel and ride assessment, the arrival forecast, and a captain’s assessment in plain language.

• Every number is computed; only the prose is written. If the language model is unavailable the briefing still renders completely. It just reads flatter.
• Sources are cited with the product and its issuance time, so any figure can be checked against NOAA directly.
• Ask about this briefing answers follow-ups from the document itself. If the answer is not in the briefing you will be told that rather than given a guess.
• Send it.Text it through your phone’s share sheet, email it to crew, copy it, or print it. The float plan shares separately, because it goes to whoever stays ashore.

6. Alerts

Choose how often you hear from us in Settings: hourly, every 3, 6 or 12 hours, daily, or off. Set quiet hours and we will not wake you. Turn on “tell me when it changes” and you also get a message when the call at a saved spot moves between GO, CAUTION and NO-GO.

The daily briefing email carries the summary, the call, the hour-by-hour strip, the wind chart against your limit, tides, current, and the pattern. The full briefing is one tap away.

7. The logbook

Log what you actually did after a read: went out, or stayed in, and how it went. After a few entries the app starts proposing adjustments to your limits based on your own outcomes. It never changes them for you. It proposes; you decide in Settings.

8. What this app cannot see

Worth knowing precisely, because the gaps are where people get hurt.

• Local effects. A forecast grid does not know about the bar at your inlet, the funnel between two points, or the chop a particular bridge makes.
• Your boat’s condition and your crew. We score weather against limits. We do not know your fuel state, your engine hours, or who is aboard.
• Traffic and obstructions. No AIS, no bridge or lock schedules, no Local Notice to Mariners.
• Data that is late or wrong. Buoys fail. Model runs are not the ocean. We label what is observed and what is forecast, and we tell you when a station is wave-blind rather than pretending the seas are flat.
• The moment you are actually out there. Conditions change faster than any forecast. This is decision support, not a guarantee, and the captain is responsible for the vessel.

9. Reading the numbers

• Wind is in knots, and the verdict scores the GUST when there is one, because that is what knocks a boat down.
• Seas are the combined height in feet. When the nearest buoy has no wave sensor we derive it from the swell and wind-wave split and mark it as modeled.
• Period is the seconds between waves. Short-period chop of the same height is a far worse ride than long swell.
• Pressure is millibars. A fast fall is worth more than the number.
• Current is in knots, and when it opposes the wind you get steep, short chop out of proportion to either.
• Tide heights are relative to mean lower low water, the same datum your chart uses.

Something unclear, or something wrong? Tell us. A manual that does not match the app is worse than no manual.