Today we’re launching Wayfinder Explore: your routing decisions, our optimization engine.

Explore is for fleets that plan and optimize their own routes. It puts Wayfinder’s routing and simulation tools in your hands. Optimize a route in one click, adjust any waypoint or engine setting, and instantly see how every change affects fuel, time, and cost before you decide.

Under the hood, it runs on the same engine behind every route Sofar’s own routing team delivers: forecasts built on the world’s largest private network of ocean sensors and a performance model that updates with every noon.

Why we built Explore

Every fleet wants the same thing from routing: a safe voyage at the best cost. The captain decides, but how good that decision is depends on the tools and team they have and that varies from fleet to fleet.

For short-sea fleets, many captains plan the voyage alone. When a new forecast comes in, they check it against their plan using whatever is on the bridge: ECDIS, a weather app, personal experience.

For liners, one late arrival ripples through the entire schedule, so many have built in-house routing teams to advise captains.

Across both, the tools haven’t kept up. Captains can see the weather but not what it will cost in fuel or time. Routing teams adjust routes by hand in 20-year old software. And when a plan changes, the reasons behind it get lost in email threads, if they’re recorded at all.

Both kinds of teams have tried self-service optimizers that looked good in a demo but didn’t hold up at sea. It was never the interface - it was what was underneath. An optimizer and a routing tool are only as good as the weather and the model of the ship. That’s what Wayfinder and our expert routing team have spent years getting right across tens of thousands of voyages, and it’s what Explore puts in the hands of captains and the teams who advise them.

Built on Wayfinder Core

Wayfinder is the only voyage optimization platform built on its own ocean sensor network, and that shows up in the two things every route depends on.

• Weather built on ocean measurements. Millions of real-time observations from Sofar's sensors feed our forecasts every day, making them up to 50% more accurate than other leading models.
• A digital twin of each ship. We start with the physics: each twin is built on naval architecture principles. Then we layer on machine learning that retrains the moment a new noon report arrives. That's how Wayfinder predicts fuel within 2% and speed within 0.5 knots for most vessels.

What you can do with Explore

1. One-click optimization. Explore generates a fuel-minimizing route that meets the required arrival time and respects the vessel's safety limits. Optimize speed or speed and route together, and lock any section that shouldn't change,
2. Instant route simulation. ECDIS lets you edit waypoints and speed. Explore lets you edit waypoints and engine inputs like RPM and power. Change a setting and you see immediately how the ship performs through the forecast weather, with speed, ETA, and fuel updating as you go.
3. Route sharing. Share any route by link with anyone on your team, from the captain to the routing desk to operations. Everyone sees the same route, weather, and economics, so decisions can start from the same picture.
4. Decision history. Explore saves the forecast and the fuel, time, and cost of every option considered at each decision point, so any decision can be reviewed based on what was known at the time, not what happened after.
5. Custom alerts. Set your own thresholds and get notified when a vessel goes off track, changes route, or gets too close to a tropical storm or severe weather. Shore teams know when something needs attention without checking every vessel every day.
6. Works offline. Once voyage data loads, optimization, route simulation, and editing all run locally on the bridge, with the same instant results.

Getting Started

Explore is available to fleets whose captains or routing teams plan and optimize their own voyages. To get started, book a demo to see the fuel, time, and cost of every routing decision, built on Sofar's forecasts.