Do Mariners really need Route Optimisation?
“Well, we all use optimised planning every day. When you get in your car in the morning and decide to take a different route to work to avoid the roadworks in your area. Or when you choose the evening flight that lays over in Amsterdam instead of the morning flight that stops over in Paris. That’s route optimisation. Both will get you to your destination, but taking the evening flight means you can ask your friend for a lift to the airport. Planning a journey isn’t always as simple as knowing the shortest distance, there are lots of factors that can make a big difference in the decision-making. For mariners, the biggest factor is the weather.”
Weather changes so quickly. By the time vessels received and paid for an optimised route, would it even still be accurate?
“That’s exactly why we designed our Route Optimisation feature to be used onboard the vessel. It’s an annual subscription for a feature that can be run continuously for as many routes as the vessel wants. This means that if the weather changes unexpectantly the vessel can rerun the optimisation at no extra cost, but more importantly, they can run it throughout their voyage too. So, for example, if a voyage lasts ten days, the predicted weather at the start of that journey might look significantly different towards the end of those ten days. With the capability to continually rerun the optimisation, it allows mariners to refine their longer passages with real accuracy.”
If we’re running it onboard, how can we be sure that the weather we’re optimising against is accurate?
“This feature is used in conjunction with Seall’s Data Options. If you have no internet access onboard, we do give users the option to request the data by email packet. But we strongly encourage you to use the Automatic Updates feature. Having this enabled means, you never have to remember to complete a manual update. It autonomously checks our server for updates and downloads only what’s necessary. We update the global forecast to our server several times a day so you can be assured that the data displayed on your application is viable.”
