Cornell’s Ocean Atlas

New pilot charts for all oceans of the world

Jimmy Cornell, experienced sailor and bestselling author, has launched a new product that is already being greeted with great enthusiasm by sailors worldwide.

The founder of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, noonsite.com and author of the sailor’s bible World Cruising Routes (book) has teamed up with his son Ivan to produce Cornell’s Ocean Atlas, an atlas of 129 up-to-date pilot charts aimed at sailors planning offshore voyages.
The charts in Cornell’s Ocean Atlas are based on the most recent weather data gathered by meteorological satellites over the last twenty years.

60 monthly pilot charts of all oceans for the world show wind speed and direction, current speed and direction, approximate extent of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, the most common tracks of tropical storms, and the mean location of high pressure cells for each hemisphere.

69 detailed charts of the most commonly sailed transoceanic routes make it easier for cruising sailors to plan a route that takes best advantage of the prevailing weather conditions at that time of year.
Sidebars with tactical suggestions have been added to the months when most passages are undertaken.
The comments and tips on tactics, as well as weather overviews for each ocean, were contributed by meteorologists and routers specializing in those oceanic areas.

Cornell’s Ocean Atlas will be available in the US in January 2012 from this website (www.cornellsailing.com), Cruising World magazine, Paradise Cay Publications, and at Sail America’s Strictly Sail boat shows in Chicago in January, Miami in February, and Oakland, CA in April, 2012.
The atlas will be officially launched at Strictly Sail Chicago in January 2012 where Jimmy Cornell will offer his popular Long Distance Cruising Seminar plus shorter seminars on a broad range of cruising topics.

More information on Cornell’s Ocean Atlas

Pilot charts, also referred to as routing charts, have been the most important passage planning tool since the middle of the nineteenth century.
The first systematic study of ships’ sailing routes, and the weather conditions that affect them, was undertaken in the 19th century by Lieutenant Maury of the US Navy with the aid of shipmasters’ logbooks.
Much of the information contained in the pilot charts that are in use today is still based on those observations and, although they have been updated at regular intervals, the scarcity of reliable sources, inaccuracy of the observations, or the climate changes that have occurred over the years, have rendered some of the information shown on those charts to be now inaccurate.

To present as true a picture as possible of the actual conditions which prevail in today’s oceans, the charts in Cornell’s Ocean Atlas are based on extensive data collected by meteorological satellites from 1987 to the present.
This data was processed by Ivan Cornell, whose programming experience has made both noonsite.com and this atlas possible.

Sailors who have consulted advance copies of the atlas are describing it as ground-breaking for its content, but also for its organization and layout, which reflect Jimmy Cornell’s unmatched world voyaging experience.
The scale and range of charts are carefully chosen so that sailors can see all the relevant information and plan their passages on a single chart.
As one world cruiser stated, on seeing the format and detail of the atlas “This is a game-changer. It should be hidden away and kept a secret so that it is as hard for future cruisers as it was for us.”

As Jimmy Cornell says “Our main objective has been to create the kind of publication we would have greatly appreciated if it had been available when we sailed on any of the five circumnavigations of the globe which we share between us.”

Links :

• NGA : Atlas of Pilot Charts