MaxSea TZ – Downloading weather data on your sat phone 1 of 2

As  I mentioned in my previous post I am participating in the Rally Portugal 2012 – which is currently holed up un Falmouth!…We should haver left 3 days ago, crossing Biscay heading for Baiona in Spain – but extreme weather in the By has meant that "discretion has been the better part of valour”.

While in port I have had access to the internet and a variety of Grib file services (Ugrib and zyGrib) or the UK Met Office or the Magic Seaweed site. I can use either marina based Wifi or even my 3G Apple iPhone to connect up the laptop.

Critique 1:

But, what about on passage? Well, like many sailors planning ocean passages I have installed an Iridium 9555 sat phone which I intend to use for text only email – carefully screened by my airtime and email service provider Mailasail.com.

Using my MaxSea software I have easily set up an area of sea that I am interested in and downloaded up to date weather data to use in my passage planning.

But what happens when I use my sat phone.?…my request to access the MaxSea weather service using email is bounced by MaxSea servers !

I think this is an oversight by MaxSea.

When you buy MaxSea software you obviously use your normal email address to register with their service.But when you go to sea – and are at sea – you obviously would not dream of logging on to your normal email address using a sat phone! – Can you imagine the joy of paying to download junk mail from all those web sites who have your email address!….What you do is use a limited distribution email address such as the one I have at mailasail.com.

Unfortunately this email address cannot request weather downloads from MaxSea because it is not the one that you used to register the software.

	Painting a sea area around two alternative routes for crossing Biscay..
	Selecting data to download. In this case I have chosen Wind; Pressure; Waves and currents
	Selecting a number of days projections to download – in this case 8 days
	Selecting how you would like the data – here I have chosen email…hoping to get it on my sat phone
	Selecting to get the data as a zip file
	Being warned that it could take 10 to 15 minutes for a response from the MaxSea servers.

Suggestion 1:

MaxSea could easily allow you to change the email address that is eligible to request weather data from their servers – while still limiting it to one email address per user.