When should ship captains use weather routing?

Of note, personally, I never fully trusted any of the the weather routing services my company subscribed to when it came to avoiding hurricanes. And I don’t want the USCG mandate the use of weather routing services.

The two things I would like to see are:

  1. A log of historical performance for all weather routing services – I never fully trusted any of the weather routing services we used because none of them were willing to show me a chart of historical predictions vs storm tracks (NOAA does provide this information!)

  2. I’d like to see masters start talking to each other when storms arrive. Often the guy going the wrong way is missing a piece of critical information or knowledge… and - from what I’ve seen - the Masters who choose the optimal routes consistently are also the Masters who are most willing to pick up the phone and call other nearby ships.

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