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Board » Technical Support » Getting a grib from Saildocs

Courtesy of SOLer bonknhoot in a solfans blog here


QUOTE
Now, those of us who route know that the gribs we can download from BrainAid are 7-day forecasts. If these won’t get you to your goal, it is not difficult to get a 14-day grib from NOAA, the same source SOL uses for our ocean races. Just send an email to query@saildocs.com that looks like:
gfs:45N,35S,81W,12W|0.5,0.5|0,3,…,360|

As you can see, it is in three parts:

45N,35S,81W,12W are the area co-ords
0.5,0.5 is the spacing of the grid for the grib (e.g. 0.5O latitud- and 0.5O longitudinally)
0,3,…,360 is the spacing and range along the time dimension (e.g. every 3hr to 360hr):

UNQUOTE
IIRC you also need to include PRESS,WIND at the end of the sentence.

Also, there should be no other content on the request mail. i.e. no signature line.
RC's solution worked for me without PRESS(URE) and WIND at the end. You just need to have no surplus spaces in the text.
You can also request a saildocs grib directly in qtVlm by selecting a zone and right-click. Many options are available in qtVlm->configuration->grib, and qtVlm will set the correct syntax automatically (which can be a bit more complicated if the requested zone includes the date line), and eventually send the mail for you. BTW next version coming soon will also have an option to request gusts.

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