Wind Aware™ – The Fun, New Point-of-Sail app for Aspiring Skippers
“I still don’t get it” she said.
“Which part don’t you get?”, I asked. “I think we might be just over complicating it a bit”, I said then with more hope than certainty.
It was at this point I knew that I needed better tools for the job than mere words. I was in my first year as a Yachtmaster Instructor & still learning the ropes. I was working for an RYA accredited sailing school based in Greece. The client base was predominantly well educated professionals, used to receiving & processing new information. And yet, here I was, struggling to communicate the concepts of Points-of-Sail and Apparent wind angle and how they relate to each other.
My presentation on the subject went something like this:
“Imagine you are a bird looking down on the boat. Now, imagine the boat is inside a clock with the bow at 12 & the stern at 6. Now, imagine that the windex arrow at the top of the mast is the hour hand, telling us what time the wind is at. So, if the arrow points to 11 o’clock, we are close-hauled.”
Simple! Or so I thought. I knew I had no more than a small window of a few minutes to explain these concepts to my student. I find that after listening to a certain number of words, people just switch off if they haven’t grasped what I am trying to explain. It’s a classic human communication breakdown. Sometimes we don’t have the words to describe the picture in our minds’ eye that will conjure the same picture in the mind of another.
Based on this experience and subsequent others – I became aware of the need for an interactive learning aid to teach wind awareness & point-of-sail terminology. Faced with a bad case of “Instructor inadequacy”, I imagined that surely there was some tool to explain dynamically how these things were interrelated. To my surprise I found no such tool existed, despite the need and so to this end I applied my sailing skills and instructor training.
So often I see students nodding understanding of a topic only to find later they may have missed a key point. In all walks of life, people can be reluctant to ask questions, especially if a topic has already been covered. I personally have heard people exclaim “I’m so glad you asked that question because I didn’t understand either!”
Wind Aware™ is a simple & effective reference tool to remind them of details they may have heard but not understood. If there is something a student is not 100% sure of, Wind Aware™ will remind them. Wind Aware™ turns knowledge into understanding for the user at his or her own pace in a non threatening, non-pressurised environment, for me always the best environment in which to learn.
So…What is the Wind Aware™ app?
The Wind Aware™ app is an engaging, interactive way to learn about Points of Sail. It will facilitate students learning correct sailing terminology. Wind Aware™ helps turn knowledge into understanding, allowing students to learn at their own pace and convenience either at home, commuting or after a day on the water.
The graphics and audio show how helm, sail position and windex direction all relate to each other, as the boat turns and the apparent wind angle changes. By rotating your smart-phone or tablet the turning of the boat is simulated, clearly illustrating the key concepts and emphasizing the key interactions.
Wind Aware™ enables the student to practice the communication and reinforce the actions required to successfully manoeuvre a sailing vessel, in a non-pressurised environment.
Who should use Wind Aware™?
Wind Aware™ is most useful for Competent Crew and Day Skipper candidates but it will help all sailors to improve and refresh their knowledge of wind awareness. It is designed specifically to help sailors make that step up to vessel command with confidence and lead a crew with competence.
And the result?
“Now I get it”, she said smiling, “You lost me after the bird flying overhead before to be honest, but this makes proper sense! It’s so much simpler when you see it like that. I can sort of…get my head out of the boat now & understand what’s happening around me”.
No more instructor inadequacy!
Wind Aware™ Pro and Lite are available from the Apple iTunes App Store and Google Play on both Android and iOS platforms and are able to tried before purchase.
Enjoy!
The Wind Aware Team.
Weather Chat
There are so many weather apps & websites available now all trying to grab your attention & all telling you they are the most accurate forecasters. The reality is all the basic data is coming from the same place. It is then collated & analysed by forecasters, most of whom have vast experience using different “weather modelling” software and local knowledge of what systems do and how they behave under certain circumstances.
It is really important to remember that the apps and sites that offer a forecast in a tabulated format are not required, for example, to fill in the gaps between the morning and afternoon forecasts or provide synoptic charts, and these services are therefore under less pressure to be accurate. Important too is the fact that commercial shipping relies heavily on national meteorological services for accurate forecasting (Oil-tanker Masters probably won’t check Wind Guru when rounding Finnisterre!)
This commercial pressure ensures a higher degree of accuracy from the national meteorological services. They also draw on a detailed historical weather record database that just is not available to many websites. With all this in mind, I have to say I think it is crucial to pay attention to the sea area forecasts from the country nearest to where we are passage making. they are in a better position to anticipate and track changes, and crucially, inform local marine traffic as soon as they indentify those changes.
For the UK & Ireland, you can’t look past the national Met offices. They are both singing from the same sheet and are accurate with short term forecasts and 5 day animated forecasts, and the UK service has an offering for lo-bandwidth devices. In my humble sailing career it has become apparent that a decent national maritime forecasting operation is a source of national pride for most nations, so look to your own country or the national forecaster for your chosen cruising area for the best information.
Personally, a picture paints a thousand words so I like using Sat24.com This site plays an animation of satellite pictures taken every 15 minutes up to now. This combined with a synoptic chart and sea are forecast give a great “Big Picture” idea of what is happening & as a result what will happen.
When I am overseas or away from my local cruising grounds I like to use passageweather.com It is by far the most accurate forecaster that I have used and is specifically for sailors. The detailed wind, surface pressure and wave information available is in nice bite-sized 3hr chunks, making it easy to accurately plan passages when weather windows are small and decisions are critical. It has a great responsive mobile site too Passage Weather Mobile
We really hope you find this little weather chat useful, enjoy!
The Wind Aware Team.
