Squid - Marine Navigation

I would like the app, except it is very buggy. For example, it will route me on tight angles like TWA 40 degrees when my polars are super slow at that angle and I’ve entered in the advanced options to not go tighter than TWA 60. Or when it has me going 1.2 knots in 12 knots true wind speed and 11 knots apparent, which doesn’t match my polar at all. Or the confusion between boat speed and SOG: if I set it to motor a given speed in a strong current it doesn’t correctly add in how the current impacts my SOG. Often squid does give me reasonable routes for simple cases in open water and minimal current… but in complicated cases with stronger currents and complicated routes it’s useless.

I like Squid a lot because it’s easy to use and to demo to students (I’m a volunteer sailing instructor in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Lake Michigan). Squid is a simple, user-friendly routing app with sufficiently sophisticated functionality. For those wanting something even simpler, it can be used as a GRIB viewer with access to many high resolution models. It allows you to choose the boat’s polar and restrict the route with waypoints. For cruisers it’s useful to have parameters that allow the user to change the standard polars, scale them down to a certain percentage, and include running the engine if the boat speed drops below a certain amount. Each time I demo it, my students comment how great it is. I like very much myself so I highly recommend it.