Here are some notes to help those of you with Internet access to view weather maps going many days into the future.

For trip-planning , weather maps covering the next week are freely and readily available from Maps from such sites as  https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/PUBLIC/

If you have email access on board your boat you can have the GFS (Global Forecast System) maps sent to you as GRIB files via an organisation called Saildocs (www.sailmail.com)  by sending the following email :

To:
query@saildocs.com

Subject: anything or blank
Message: send grib:0S,50S,145E,140W|2,2|24,48,72,96,120,144,168,192,216,240|
 

Make sure that the message all fits on one line. After a few minutes an email will be sent back, containing an attached binary file with a name such as grib041120093706.grb and about 32Kb big.
 

There are several grib viewing programs, and one that will do the job nicely is available for a PC using Windows from Airmail by Jim Corenman.
First you have to download and install the ham version of Airmail from http://www.siriuscyber.net/ham/
 

Then go to http://www.siriuscyber.net/wxfax/

and find the section on Grib/Fax viewer
and click on the link labelled "Click here to download . This will download viewfax422.exe. Click on and run this file to install Viewfax in the folder called Airmail.

A nice trick is to associate xxx.grb files with viewfax.exe. One quick way to do this in Windows is to "shift-right-click" on any .grb file and click on the "open with…" option. In Win XP simply click on the .grb file,  then click on "browse…" and find and select C:/program files/Airmail/viewfax.exe. Once this association is set up all you need to do to view a grb file is simply click on it, even as an email attachment.