Plan a sailing route: stopovers, waypoints, alternatives and multi-day trips

You plan a sailing route in Sailseer much like a journey in a map app ashore: pick start and destination, add stopovers, and the route is ready with distance, passage time, bridges and ports of refuge. If you want to decide the line yourself, set it by hand as on a chart plotter. Then check the weather, split the route into daily legs or load it onto the plotter as GPX. This guide shows each step on the map.

How do I choose start and destination?

Type the name of a harbour into the Start field and then into the Destination field. Matches in the waters of the start come first, the nearest of them at the top, so that “Marina” doesn't end up at the other end of Europe.

Instead of a harbour you can also use a free position: “My location” takes the position of your device, “Pick on the map” takes your next tap on the map. If the position lies within 500 m of a harbour, Sailseer offers it (“Use as start”), which helps when you tap into the harbour basin. Clicking a harbour on the map opens its harbour info with depth, services and weather; there, “Add to route as” inserts it as start, stopover or destination. As soon as both are set, Sailseer calculates the route without weather, and “View route” shows it.

How do I add stopovers?

In three ways, depending on whether you know the harbour or are looking for it on the map:

The stops are listed one below the other, as in Google Maps. Use the handle to reorder them, ✕ removes a stop, and ⇅ next to the destination reverses the whole route. After every change Sailseer recalculates only the route, and the map view stays where it is.

How does Sailseer find the way?

Through a network of tracks on the water that avoids land and shallow water. Your boat and the rules of the area count:

• Draught: Sailseer checks for each harbour whether the depth is enough for your boat.
• Mast height: No route passes under a fixed bridge your mast doesn't fit under; opening bridges and locks appear in the schedule with opening times and waiting time.
• Restricted areas: No route leads through restricted or protected areas where navigation is prohibited. Firing ranges without known times are avoided where there is another way, and named otherwise.
• Fairways: When entering and leaving harbour, the route follows the buoyed channel where there is one, and it only passes through another harbour if going around would be much longer.

If there is more than one sensible way, Sailseer shows up to three side by side under “Other routes (without weather)”: with distance, passage time, extra distance and bridges with waiting time, named after the passage that only this way takes (for example “via Fehmarnsund”). The others lie grey on the map, and a tap selects one.

How do I set the route by hand as on a chart plotter?

On the route, switch the route line from “Automatic” to “Manual”. The automatic route then turns into waypoints you can edit freely:

1. Drag a waypoint to move the line.
2. The + in the middle of a straight leg inserts a waypoint.
3. Tapping a waypoint opens “Delete”.
4. “Undo” takes back up to 50 steps, “Automatic” discards the waypoints, “Done” hides the handles.

Sailseer checks every straight leg against land and water depth from EMODnet and marks it red if it crosses land, orange if the water is too shallow for your draught. Bridges and locks within 200 m of a straight leg count as passages on the route, and restricted areas along a straight leg are named in the note below the route. The shared link, the GPX and the weather check take your waypoints with them. A manual route has no alternatives, and the multi-day trip still plans automatically.

What does the route show before the weather check?

Everything that doesn't depend on the weather: distance and passage time at your boat's planning speed, legs with a schedule, bridges and locks with waiting times, traffic separation schemes, formalities at border crossings, engine hours and diesel, and ports of refuge spread along the whole route instead of bunched at the destination. For each country it also says how accurate the chart is there.

Only “Check weather” calculates the route with wind, waves and current for every departure in the next 120 hours. If a waypoint lies upwind, the weather check lays out tacks; Weather window and Sailing upwind explain how to read the result. Bridges and locks explains opening times and clearance heights.

How far can I get from a harbour?

The range shows you: the “Range” button next to the start, “Harbours within reach of …” in the destination's list or “Harbours in reach from here” in the harbour info. Sailseer colours every harbour you can reach by water within your daily budget (default 30 nm): green the near ones, yellow the middle ones, red those at the edge. The tooltip gives distance and passage time, and a click makes the harbour your destination. That way you find a day's destination without measuring the map.

How do I plan a multi-day trip or round trip?

In the ⋮ menu at the start, via “Plan multi-day trip”. You set the daily budget, and Sailseer splits the route into daily legs and picks each day's destination by draught, facilities and berths, with a little variety in the area:

Stopovers you set above are planned in as mandatory harbours, as far as they fit the budget. If no plan works, the message says from which daily budget it would. Each day lists ports of refuge, and the GPX contains one route per day. You check the weather for each daily leg as a passage of its own with start, destination and departure. Passage planning step by step describes the planning from first idea to casting off.

How do I get the route onto the plotter or to the crew?

Via the ⋮ menu at the start:

• GPX: GPX 1.1 for Garmin, Raymarine and B&G; the route follows the full way to within 25 m.
• Load GPX route: a route, track or waypoints from OpenCPN, Navionics or the plotter; start and destination snap to the nearest harbour. More on this in GRIB and plotter.
• Share route: a link with all stops, waypoints and the boat, on a phone via the share menu.
• Save route: stores the route under “Saved”, the same on all devices with an account.
• Print: the route with legs and bridges on paper for the chart table.

Under way, “Start navigation” starts navigation mode: the map follows the boat, shows the next waypoint with course and distance and warns you when you are off the route.

Sailseer is a planning aid and not for navigation: check the route on the official chart before casting off. Official charts, marine forecasts and warnings take precedence.