Propellor: sailing yacht routing

I like sailing and I like puzzles. Propellor actually is not my project and I need to remind myself not stealing this project from my girlfriend. She actually graduated on a sailing planner in pure C and I pitched in as "the interested computer guy" to help her out.

Navigation for sailing yachts is quite the opposite from normal navigation: no roads and your performance comes from the weather and how your boat handles. It is an interesting subject since weather data is gridded and seemingly random. And it's inherently not entirely correct.

We're targeting it for "small" ocean/sea-trips like hopping from the Netherlands to England and such; it means we have enough weather data, but it is on open water so we have less interference from land. The platform of choice is an iPad 3G because of the built-in GPS and the posibility to do really natural assisted route planning.

For now it means to further educate her in programming; I learned her some python and hammered some principles for C coding into her head. It will be a nice project for me creating a design and suitable experience for it, while helping her with the code (and coding quite a bit I guess).

In the mean time, we created a new version to help out friends taking part in a race from Scheveningen (NL) to Brest (FR). The algorithm now uses currents, as well as updated grid creation which allows it to plot around obstacles and will generate a solution if that solution exists.