Our business is the provision of customized weather forecasts, passage timing and routing advice for sail and motor yachts making extended open ocean passages globally. Our clients' vessels are typically 40-150 ft LOA making passages in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and South Pacific. About 75% of our clients' vessels are sailing yachts and about 25% are motor yachts.
To explore the site, click on any of the hyperlinks beneath the Ocean-Pro banner, at the top of every page. Your browser's "back" button will also take you back to a prior page. Several pages of the site have large, high-resolution images and may download slowly. If you have questions or suggestions feel free to call or email. See the contact info below. You can email us instantly from any page of the site.
Custom Global Weather Routing for Yachts. Beginning in October of 2002 we added offshore weather forecasting and routing and ocean current and Gulf Stream analysis and routing to the services we offer. "Routing", whether it involves the weather, sea conditions or ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, involves understanding the vessels sea keeping characteristics, analysing the present and forecast weather, ocean current flows and eddies and carefully determining the best departure weather window and the safest or fastest route to the destination. If you are able to receive weather forecasts and or images onboard, that is excellent. And having a professional weather router advising you can make all the difference in the quality of the weather and routing information being analysed and in the care and prudence going into your passage planning, timing and routing decisions.
* (Home) is Ocean-Pro's home page.
* (Site Index) this page
* (Offshore Communications) We added the Communications page in 2015. It explains the need for and importance of having reliable, long distance, two-way communications capability aboard our client vessels. The page describes satellite phone options such as Iridium, marine broadband options like Bgan and KVH TracPhone and HF SSB tranceiver options. Having both voice and email capability is highly desireable. 90% of our communications with vessels is via email.
* (Global Satellite Weather) provides links to excellent high resolution, stitched, full screen, IR satellite imagery for the full Atlantic, full Pacific and full Indian oceans.
* (US Charts) and (International Charts) provides many full size, digital, marine maps and charts of the Caribbean and North America. All maps and charts can be enlarged to much larger than full screen. The Caribbean map covers from Florida and Cuba to the Virgins, Leewards and Windwards, to Trinidad and the north coast of South America, (Venezuela and Columbia), to all of Central America, (Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, the San Blas Islands, Belize, and Mexico. North America is represented by numerous actual NOAA marine charts, digitized by Maptech, Inc. Clicking on any of the maps or charts will load a full size image of the chart for detailed viewing. The NOAA marine charts cover the US East coast from Nova Scotia to Mexico, plus the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. If you would like to see more NOAA charts, see our hyperlinks to several sources for online charts on the Resources page.
* (Passages) (Removed 1/25/2016) A list of a few of the many instructional deliveries completed 1993 thru 2003. Each instructional delivert is hyperlinked to a separate page dedicated to that passage with dozens of high quality color photos of the boat, the crew and the many interesting islands and ports we visited along the route.
* (Global Weather & Services) The page is primarily devoted to NCEP weather forecast imagery for the wolds oceans, Atlantic, Pacific, & Indian. The top left image provides a link to the NCEP's multi region and multi-model index page enabling the choice of weather model and global region covered. Clicking on a region and then on a highlighted model covering that region will enable you to view the most recent model runs for that region. The top right corner of the page lists and provides links to the most significant WMO weather services globally, including The NWS Marine Forecasts page, and the national meteorological services of other countries, including Bermuda, Canada, United Lingdom, France, Japan, Fiji and Australia. A link to the World Meteorological Organization, (WMO) is also included where the met services of all WMO countries can be accessed.
* (Global Tropical Weather) provides three resources for monitoring severe weather and tropical storm warnings in real time globally.
1. The top two images show the NOAA National Hurricane Center primary regions of tropical coverage, the Eastern Tropical Pacific and the entire Tropical Atlantic. Clicking on either image will open a near full screen real time image showing the NHC's latest tropical updates for that region.
2. The third image is a global map with a link to the WMO, (World Meteorological Organization's Severe Weather Center. The map depicts the worlds continents and oceans and the WMO's 25 RSMCs (Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers) and TCWCs, (Tropical Cyclone Warnings Centers). The 25 RSMCs and TCWC are located as follows. Two are in the Atlantic Ocean (Miami, Florida & Havana Cuba), two are in the Central South Pacific (Fiji & New Zealand), six are in the Western South Pacific (Australia, New Guinea & Jakarta, Indonesia), twelve are in the Western North Pacific (Guam, Japan, Asia), one is in the Central North Pacific (Hawaii), and two are in the Indian Ocean, (Reunion Island & Delhi, India).
3. The fourth image is a global map with a link to the US NWS-CPC (National Weather Service, Climate prediction Center). The map depicts the worlds continents and oceans and any real time tropical storm or severe weather threat areas. Severe weather could include high or low rainfall areas or high or low temperature areas.
4. The fifth image is a global map with a link to a full screen global map. The map depicts the worlds continents and oceans and all of the WMO & NOAA tropical storm and hurricane tracks globally from 1985 to 2005. The map and tropical storm tracks show vividly and in high detail for the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, where tropical storms have developed and their tracks.
* (Ocean Currents & Gulf Stream) provides a link to the major ocean currents of the world and to a variety of Gulf Stream images. The Gulf Stream flows from the Yucatan Channel in the NW Caribbean through the Straits of Florida, north to Cape Hatteras and then northeast into the central North Atlantic and can have a major impact on the sea height, apparent wind speed and the vessel's course and speed over the ground.
* (Global Buoy Data) We recently added this page. It contains NBDC weather buoy data reports for the world. The buoy pages show atmospheric and sea conditions at the various bouys. The bouys are maintained by the NBDC, (National Buoy Data Center) and international cooperating buoy data agencies around the world.
* (Contact) is our contact information. Our base of operations is in Naples, Florida. You can contact us by phone, fax, conventional email, or offshore by HF SSB voice or email, and of course conventional mail.
* (Capt Bob) gives you a brief bio for our president and chief weather router, Bob Cook. Bob began sailing as a small boy, in Wisconsin, in the early 60's. In the 50 years since, he has raced, cruised and taught day-sailing, coastal and offshore sailing, earned his USCG Captain's license, (Master, 100 ton), and accumulating over 150,000 nautical miles at sea primarily in the North Atlantic and Caribbean.
* (Download) (Available but not shown as an active link) to view, print or download support documents we make available and may reference.
* (Resources) (Removed 1/25/2016) Ocean-Pro's links page with over 200 categorized links.
Fair winds and following seas,
Copyright June 2000: Ocean-pro: Gulf Wind Yachting, Inc.
Webmaster: Bob Cook