Skip to main content
All CollectionsOffshore AppPC/Mac - Essential Help Topics
How to use the Offshore App on a PC / Mac
How to use the Offshore App on a PC / Mac
Arnaud Monges avatar
Written by Arnaud Monges
Updated over a month ago

The Offshore App is designed to save PredictWind weather information in an offline mode, great for boats heading offshore with a need to download forecast GRIB files on an Iridium GO, GO! exec, Satellite, email connection or coastal cruising where a cellular network is intermittent. Once the files are downloaded, they are stored locally on the device for you to review at any time.

To download GRIB files, weather routing and departure planning using a PC / Mac computer you need to use the PredictWind Offshore App which can be downloaded from here

NOTE: The Offshore App can be used on internet, cellular, satellite or email connections. When you first start using the Offshore App, we recommend you practice on a high-speed connection using the WEB tab (home wifi, marina wifi or cellular connection).

  • Move your green start waypoint and your red destination waypoint to your desired locations.

  • Anytime you adjust the route, the high-resolution GRIB areas are automatically selected for that route. If desired, you can manually override this by deselecting

    or selecting these areas. Please note that the 1km and 8km areas are only available with the Professional Subscription.

  • In addition, the GRIB offshore areas are also automatically set up when adjusting the route. Again you can manually override this area by dragging the corner of the GRIB box.

  • Click on the download button.

  • Select GRIB 50km or 100km resolution to download a GRIB area for your passage. When downloading over a Satellite connection we recommend using All Models, 24 hour timestep,5 days, 100km resolution, wind, rain and pressure. Highest resolution GRIB files are generally too large for downloading over a satellite connection. You are best to get this detailed weather information using the weather routing results.

  • Then Click Next , then Download All and then wait for your file to download.

  • While the download is in progress you can click on the hide button, and view detailed weather routing data. Here we have graphs, wind, summary, route, wave and current.

  • Once the entire download is complete you will be able to view all the GRIB data that you have requested.

  • Previous data that you have downloaded will be removed from the display, so that you are only viewing the most current forecast.

  • The wind can be displayed in 3 formats - arrows with pressure contours lines, Wind Barbs with pressure contours including wind shading , and directional arrows with pressure contour lines including wind shading. All 3 formats show the same data, so you can choose your favorite format.

  • To animate the GRIB file use the play button. You can also use the left/right arrows to manually animate the weather at your own pace. The date/time is shown in the timezone of your Laptop next to the legend. In addition you can click on the animation time slider to jump to a specific day. For example Monday.

  • You can switch between the forecast models by clicking on PWG/PWE/GFS/ECMWF/SPIRE/UKMO to get a comparison of the top 6 weather models.

  • In addition you can view rain/cloud/air temp/wave. If you have not downloaded air temperature as in this example the feature will be greyed out and not available.

  • To view the high resolution GRIB areas select GRIB highest resolution. Only 1 high resolution GRIB area can be viewed at a time. Select this area by clicking on the yellow square. Please note that you can only view high resolution areas that you have downloaded, the yellow squares. The high resolution areas contain more data and therefore take a fraction longer to display.

Additional Weather Routing Tips

The weather routing is the best tool for updating your forecast along your passage. The file size is very small (only 6KB) so very quick to download. You should update the weather routing forecast every 12 hours when the forecast models update.

• You do not need to download any GRIB files for the weather routing to be calculated, as the processing is done on the PredictWind servers in the Cloud.

Please note, the forecast will run for a maximum of 10 days. Beyond 10 days, the model forecast is not accurate. We use the ECMWF ensemble. For the Ensemble model, we download all 100 members of the ECMWF ensemble and use AI to match the ensemble member that most closely matches the 10-day ECMWF forecast; the member is then used for the 10-30-day forecast. Every 12 hours, we run this AI matching process to update the closest ensemble member. If you use the routing on the website and the PredictWind App, you will see the ECMWF Ensemble data load in the maps after 10 days.

Did this answer your question?