Proposal for Low Cost Ocean Weather Routeing

This article presents a concept for selecting a fixed time ocean route via a prefixed grid of points. The ship is to sail with a fixed pitch propeller rotating at a constant rate N. The starting and arrival points are given, as well as the starting and arrival times. The objective is to obtain a route with a minimal value N, the propeller rotating frequency, to whose cube the fuel rate is proportional. The method is designed for a discrete navigating system, and can be seen as an application of Bellman's Dynamic Programming Theory. The ship's speed is estimated with the use of a modern algorithm, based on a well-founded and well-tested hydrodynamic model.