Saildocs, a Gram Schweikert tutorial

Saildocs is the baby of West Coast weather guru Jim Corenman, who with the support of SailMail provides a free e-mail server able to feed low bandwidth weather data (and more) to boaters. While not as pretty as the free, but limited Grib.us {or similar PassageWeather}, or the costly but widely used OCENS WeatherNet {or ClearPoint}, it provides a multitude of weather data in many formats right to your in-box for free. All of the Saildocs instructions can be retrieved by e-mail ([email protected]) or from their not-really-meant-for-surfing Web site.  Below are my brief tips and tricks to using Saildocs:

Saildocs is best known for delivering GRIB (GRIdded Binary) weather files {which require some sort of software viewer to use), but it also serves NOAA text forecasts, NOAA Weather faxes, as well as some West Coast private forecasts, BBC world news, and Sailing Scuttlebutt.
   All requests are made by email to [email protected].  The Subject may be anything you wish to help you find it later in your mail box. The text of the email is where you make your requests.  You may request multiple items, by typing another command on a new line.  There are two basic types of requests, “SEND” or “SUB”.  Send will request a file for immediate retrieval one time.  Sub will set up a subscription (default: 14 days) that will be delivered every time the product requested is updated.  The number of days can be altered by adding a “days=xx” after the request command.  There is a very handy “interval=1” command that can be added to send the file as soon as it is updated (not published in the help files).  Alternatively you may set the time each file is to be sent with a “time=xx:xx” added to the end of the request. Following the Send/Sub command is the product name.  To request a GRIB file you would type:

Send gfs:44N,40N,72W,67W|0.5,0.5|0,12,24..180|WIND,WAVES
or
Send coamps:44N,40N,72W,67W|0.2,0.2|0,12,24..72|PRMSL,WIND

Saildocs hosts GFS, COAMPS, WindWave3, NoGaps, & QuickScat surface weather data as well as the Hycom RTOFS Ocean Current data that I’ve found to be a great free Gulf Stream resource (and persuaded Jim to add to the Saildocs Library for convenient retrieval).  The command for the current model would be:

Send rtofs:44N,40N,72W,67W|0.1,0.1|0,24..120|

All the GRIB models follow the same format: Model: Lat/Long| resolution (degrees)| model forecast times (hours)| parameters requested, all with no spaces.  Subscription commands are added with spaces between.
   Non-Crib products are also available and very helpful.  High resolution (at least high enough), but highly compressed, weather faxes can be requested by using the TIFF file name used at the NOAA Weatherfax Web site.  A full listing of the weatherfax file names are available here.  Similarly, text forecasts (same as read by “Metal Mike” on the radio) are available as well.  Atlantic weather codes are available here.  Example requests would be:

Send PYAA02.tif
Send FZNT23.KWNM

There are lots more available, so I suggest you poke around the Saildocs product index or request the document by sending an e-mail to [email protected] and typing “send index” in the body.
   Lastly, you can request web pages be sent to your inbox, but I would highly suggest only using short URL’s.  If the URL you want is long, I would suggest creating a link with TinyUrl.com as the address needs to be on one line and typos are easy.  In the last Marion-Bermuda race we received the tracking results once a day by setting up a subscription to the iboattrack tracking page:

Sub http://tinyurl.com/2sl32q time=12:00 days=6

While the text output is horribly formatted, it was possible to pull out the position data for the boats of interest and see how we were doing.  Certain pages certainly come out better than others, but the web-page took FOREVER to load on the {Globalstar} sat phone while the e-mail downloaded in seconds.
   My final tip is to make a text file or send yourself an e-mail with the requests you use often and have been successful with.  This way you can just copy and paste into a blank e-mail without any thought (except maybe to change your position area if you are sailing longer distances).

Hope this helps you all explore Saildocs.  It is a wonderful service and you can’t beat the low low price of free.  This is one case where you certainly DON’T get what you pay for.

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This guest entry was written by Gram Schweikert who is a naval architect/marine engineer (check out this PDF presentation on the Navy 44), and also a heck of a navigator/weather guy. I know that for sure because I sailed up from Bermuda with Gram and his step-dad on Visions of Johanna, just after the dynamic duo had placed Third in Class A against fully crewed yachts. At any rate, Gram and I were emailing last night, trying to help the Flash of Beauty crew, who were struggling a bit with Iridium/OCENS/MaxSea. It turned out to be a very, very rare case of WeatherNet server failure, but look what you and I have now learned about Saildocs. Heck, I just “sent” for that fax below and it arrived in moments, and it suggests that FOB has some good sledding ahead.  How about a big virtual round of applause for Gram, and Jim Corenman! — Ben