AWT Weather Routing/Routeing: Applied Weather Technology

AWT's Route Highlight

By George Schlinkert

The route from the U.S. Gulf or the Caribbean Sea to Brazil seems like a simple route. In the absence of hurricanes, a vessel would generally be sailing through the easterly trades. Weather routing services are frequently not provided; however, ship operators may at times be sacrificing a significant portion of their operating costs to the adverse Guiana Current without even knowing it.

In this real life example (see photo below), no weather routing services were provided. The ship sailed along the direct route. Unfortunately for the vessel operator, this took the vessel directly into the most adverse ocean currents generated by the Guiana Current.

With vessel speeds reduced by 3+ knots at times, the route added 12 hours in comparison to an alternate route passing east of this region, where the vessel would have actually achieved a benefit from a counter-current. AWT utilizes this high resolution ocean current data when providing our weather routing services, and makes this data available to ship captains through our BVS software. The newest version, BVS 6, was recently released and the attached image is from this latest release.

By not using BVS's current data, fuel costs for the voyage were increased by about 4%. In the current economic and environment climate, can an operator afford to add 4% to their operating costs?