Frequently asked questions about Sailseer

Sailseer is a web app for passage planning for sailing and motor boats. It calculates the route from harbour to harbour over water, checks the weather from several models along the way and shows tides, currents, warnings, bridges, locks and formalities. You plan directly on the map in your browser.

Sailseer is currently free. There is no advertising and there are no third-party trackers.

No. Your browser stores your boat, settings, favourites and saved routes. You only give an email address if you set up an alert, a morning briefing or a float plan.

The North Sea and the Baltic with Scandinavia; the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea from Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard via the Bay of Biscay, the Canaries, the Azores and Cape Verde to the Caribbean with the Bahamas and Bermuda, Atlantic Canada with Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River, the U.S. East Coast from Florida to Maine and the Gulf of Mexico; the whole Mediterranean; the Black Sea and the Red Sea with the Suez Canal; and the Indian Ocean from the Seychelles to Phuket, Langkawi, Singapore and the Gulf of Thailand with Koh Samui. On the Pacific, Mexico with the Sea of Cortez, the Pacific coast of Central America to Panama, the Galápagos and French Polynesia are included too. On top of that come more than a hundred inland lakes and waterways such as the Mecklenburg Lake District, the Göta Canal, the Canal du Midi and the Shannon. You will find all countries and harbours under Harbours and cruising areas.

Nine models: ICON from the DWD, ECMWF IFS and the ECMWF's AI model AIFS, GFS, the models of the Met Office and Météo-France, and regional models such as Harmonie and MET Nordic, which only count where they actually run. From these, Sailseer forms a consensus at each point and shows how far apart the models are. More in the guide to weather models.

From the official weather services: in Germany the DWD, in most European countries via MeteoAlarm, in Norway MET Norway, plus dedicated sources for places such as Morocco, Ireland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, and in the Caribbean the National Hurricane Center. Sailseer shows the warnings for the areas your route touches. Where a country has no retrievable warnings, the page says explicitly that no warning there does not mean all-clear.

Yes: with the wind alert for a harbour, the sailing wind alert for your preferred wind, the warning alert for new official warnings, the sailing window alert when a sailing window opens on your passage, and the morning briefing at the hour you choose. If you wish, the four alerts also arrive on your device as push notifications. Every email contains an unsubscribe link.

Yes. The Android app calculates planning on the device without a connection, using the same code as the server: harbour list, passage, range, multi-day trip and GPX. For OpenCPN you can download the chart of the visible area as an offline pack in MBTiles format and the wind forecast as a GRIB file; both then work without a connection. With a connection, weather, warnings and tides are added.

Yes. The Android app is in closed testing; you will find access in the profile under “Android app (test)”. On the iPhone, open the site in Safari and add it as a web app via “Share” and “Add to Home Screen”; you will then also receive push notifications.

Yes. Every route is available as GPX 1.1 for Garmin, Raymarine and B&G, with one route per day for a multi-day trip, and the wind, gusts and pressure of the map area as GRIB2 for OpenCPN, qtVlm and chart plotters. In the other direction, you can load a route, a track or waypoints from OpenCPN, Navionics or your plotter as a passage. More in the guide GRIB and plotter.

Yes. Opening times feed into the route, for example on the Kiel Canal with the Kiel-Holtenau lock, at around 500 structures in the Netherlands, Belgium and France from EuRIS, and on the German coast with the notices to mariners. Sailseer compares fixed bridges with your mast height. Where no times are known, it assumes 06:00 to 22:00 and marks this as an assumption; more in the guide Bridges and locks.

Yes. High and low water and the water level come from tide gauges such as those of the BSH and from the Copernicus Marine ocean models, and the tidal stream is included in the speed over ground. Against too strong a stream the plan waits for the turn of the tide, and in the Wadden Sea Sailseer shows when a tidal channel has enough water. More in the guide Tides and currents.

Yes, as an overview: the planner names the countries on your route and says at each border crossing whether a Schengen or customs border is coming up and whether you need to clear out. Every country page, for example Croatia, summarises clearance, documents and fees. This is not legal advice, so check with the official authorities before departure; more in the guide Clearing in.

You record boat, crew, passage, departure, ETA and up to three shore contacts. If you do not report “Arrived” after the ETA and grace period, they get an overdue email with your last report and position. It is a safety net, not search and rescue; more in the guide Float plan.

No. Sailseer is a planning aid and not intended for navigation: official charts, marine forecasts and warnings always take precedence. Navigation mode and the shipping traffic layer do not replace a plotter or a lookout either, and are not intended for collision avoidance.

Twelve: German, English, French, Spanish, Greek, Croatian, Turkish, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Czech and Danish. If you have not chosen one, Sailseer uses your browser's language and, if that is not available, English; you can change it in the profile under Settings. Original messages from the weather services are shown verbatim.

Boat, settings and saved routes stay in your browser. Sailseer only stores an email address for alerts, briefings or float plans, and only for as long as you use them. Sailseer counts usage itself, without third-party services and only as daily totals, and you can switch that off; everything else is in the privacy policy.

Via the contact form. You can attach up to five files, such as screenshots or a GPX track. Ideally, tell us the start, destination, time and what you expected to happen.