37,089
Drifter measurements
validating our currents
Current-optimized passage planning
Optimize every
voyage.
Velum Tech routes tankers on the ocean currents that are actually there — live NOAA models, real charted safety fairways, and the traffic separation schemes you're legally bound to. Written by a licensed deck officer who got tired of software that drew straight lines across a moving ocean.
3
NOAA current models
AMSEAS · USEAST · GoMOFS
AMSEAS · USEAST · GoMOFS
30
Ports
Brownsville → Bucksport
Brownsville → Bucksport
166/167
33 CFR parts encoded
fairways · separation schemes
fairways · separation schemes
Verification
We check our currents against buoys that actually floated there.
Anyone can call an ocean-model API. The harder question is whether that model matches the water. A drifter buoy floats with the current, so its hour-to-hour displacement is a measurement — and NOAA's Global Drifter Program has decades of them.
We score our field against every drifter observation in the region and season a voyage sails through, then correct the model where the measurements prove it's wrong. The correction is fitted on 70% of the buoys and tested on the 30% it has never seen — if it doesn't reduce error on held-out data, we don't apply it.
Gulf of Mexico & Straits of Florida · August · 37,089 observations
Held-out error against measured drifter currents — a 20% reduction. Figures are an upper bound: they include genuine year-to-year variability as well as model error.
Platform
A passage plan, not a shortest path.
The optimizer minimises time under a moving current field, then holds the result to the same rules you'd be held to on the bridge — charted fairways, one-way lanes, separation zones, the Florida Keys PSSA, and a five-mile offshore standoff.
You get a chart and a waypoint table you can actually work from: course, distance, speed through the water, and speed made good on every leg.
Currents
Three models, stitched
AMSEAS, USEAST and GoMOFS blended by priority so one voyage can cross all three domains without a seam.
Regulation
Real charted geometry
NOAA safety-fairway polygons and 33 CFR 167 schemes — not a buffer drawn around a straight line.
Arrival
Speed or RTA
Give a speed and get an ETA, or give a required arrival and get the speed to make good.
Compliance
CII, honestly
Fuel, CO₂ and an IMO A–E rating per route, plus the slow-steam speed that moves the band.
Results
The gain depends on the water. We'd rather show you the range.
Current routing pays when there's a current worth riding. On the Gulf Stream that is most of the year; on a slack Gulf crossing it can be close to nothing. Both are below, measured the same way — recommended route against the direct compliant line, under the same currents.
| Voyage | Distance | Time saved | Conditions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miami → Norfolk | 746 nm | 2.2 h | Gulf Stream, favourable |
| Sabine Pass → Port Everglades | 892 nm | 0.1 h | Slack Gulf crossing |
Measured on live NOAA data, single voyages. Fuel and CO₂ figures derived from these times are modelled from a vessel performance curve — we label them as modelled until we've calibrated against your noon reports.
Free analysis
Send us your last 12 months. We'll show you what the currents cost you.
We re-run voyages you've already sailed on the ocean currents that were actually present those days, and hand you back the hours, the fuel and the CII band you would have finished with. No integration, no install — a voyage list is enough.
Who builds it
"Most routing software treats a voyage like an abstract shortest-path problem."
Velum Tech was founded by a licensed deck officer who sailed oil tankers and kept meeting tools that ignored both the ocean and the rulebook. Every routing decision in the product traces back to something a mate actually has to answer for on watch.
We use AI to move faster on research and verification. We don't use it to decide where your ship goes — that comes from published oceanographic data and federal regulation.
Data sources
NOAA NCOM AMSEAS
NOAA NCOM USEAST
NOAA GoMOFS
NOAA Global Drifter Program
NOAA ENC / Coast Pilot
33 CFR 166 · 167 · 15 CFR 922