Saturday, October 23, 2010

Real time weather - Cruise Cams

I have previously mentioned Sailwx (sailwx.info), a web site that gives access to the MAROB reporting system.  MAROB is the voluntary marine observation reporting program run by the United States national weather service.  This system collects voluntary marine weather observations from ships at sea and complies them into a data base.  Sailwx makes this data available on a web page.  As a cruising sailor nothing is more important than knowing the actual wind, wave, and weather conditions at sea.  Forecasts are important but being able to compare the forecast to currently observed conditions provides a major increase in working knowledge.

While spending time on the Sailwx.info site I noticed a link to "kroooz-cams"  These are web cameras that are on board a large number of the cruise ship fleets (e.g. Carnival, Cunard, Princess.)  Although not as useful from a weather data point of view as the MAROB reports they are still pretty cool.  When I was playing with the site this morning I noticed that one Princess ship was heading down past the Statue of Liberty, a place I had been only a couple of weeks ago.  I think it is a fun site and you might enjoy it.

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