Just a bit of good feedback - we sailed yesterday around the tip of Brittany, Orca navigation was on point including for some of the trickier areas. I would never blindly follow autorouting but it’s really nice as a general indication, and it did its role. A couple of other route suggestions for that day were questionable, but I just did my own thing.
Weather was pretty lousy for a large part of the day, and I was impressed that heavy rain on the Display 2 really didn’t interfere with touch. Love the brightness too.
Great job, I am really looking forward to the evolutions and improvements of Orca.
And another great bad experience last night, from Dart Harbour to Portland in the UK. This passage passes Portland Bill, one of the most dangerous tidal races in UK waters. We rounded Portland Bill after midnight, having tracked to our planned passage to within 30 minutes at each waypoint.
Key positives:
- Passage planning and replanning worked well. We reworked the route and timing countless times over a week, looking for an acceptable weather window.
- Weather forecasts were detailed and accurate, giving us a good advance warning of the poor conditions and when they would hit us.
- Night view on charts is really really clear and usable.
- The D2 responsiveness update made a huge difference to usability and confidence
Suggestions for further optimisation
- Tidal currents data needs improvement, as discussed in various forums. Where we sail, the currents sometimes exceed 8 knots (near the Channel Islands). And lots of our passages are planned primarily around tidal races such as Hurst Point, Start Point, Portland Bill. The sailing passage processor is ideal for this, it just needs more detailed tidal current data to make it fly.
- ETA is based (I think) on a moving average SOG over the past few minutes. If it could understand tidal currents, it would be more realistic.
- Waypoint monitoring. Currently, I set up manual Spots, and I name them the time I expect to reach them, e.g. “19:30”, “20:45”, etc. The names display in the chart, so I can see a simple representation on the chart of passage timings. I also note down these ETAs in my written plan and then note the actuals during the passsage. It would be great if I could nominate points on the Route that I wanted to monitor in this way, for Orca to manage on a status screen somewhere.
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Hello everyone. Thanks for your feedback, I’m logging this internally.
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