Which designs thrive in heavy air?

Weather Intelligence is live. ERA5 meteorological reanalysis — wind, wave, and pressure — across the race-dates in coverage.


Available as a product. Weather-conditioned performance feeds the Event Pack — the packaged results-intelligence pack for organizers and media. See Event Pack →

FleetEdge reveals the relationship between design type and racing conditions. Combined with the 8-archetype FleetEdge engine, weather enrichment shows how each archetype performs in specific conditions — light air, heavy breeze, offshore swell.

You can now see whether a boat's race results reflect skill, conditions, or both. ERA5 reanalysis is sampled against race-leg centroids and venue bounding boxes timed to each running's actual window, providing a consistent meteorological record from the moment each race in coverage started to the moment it finished.

This changes what race results mean. A boat's win in light air tells a different story than the same win in heavy air. Design characteristics that favor specific conditions become visible. Crew performance can be isolated from environmental factors. The archetype-condition interaction emerges as a measurable dimension.

Weather Intelligence turns race results into calibrated, condition-aware performance data — quantifying the conditions that shaped each race against the fleet that raced it.

Six dimensions read from this layer.

Weather Intelligence is a data layer — ERA5 reanalysis sampled at the race. The analytics derived from it live in the Condition & Tactical family, read on every race record carrying ERA5 coverage, and in the App's Archetypes vs. Conditions view, where the ERA5 and HYCOM columns sit beside each archetype's race PPI.

ECMWF ERA5 Reanalysis.

ERA5 is the fifth generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis, produced at 31 km horizontal resolution. Unlike live weather forecasts, reanalysis data is retrospectively computed using the full global observation network — producing one of the most complete and consistent meteorological records available.

FleetEdge matches ERA5 grid cells to race-leg centroids and venue bounding boxes timed to each running's window, extracting wind speed, wind direction, significant wave height, mean wave period, and surface pressure. Reanalysis — not forecast — is the right instrument here: only the retrospective global observation network gives the historical accuracy a race-condition record requires.

The result is a weather archive that grows as new races are added to FleetEdge — a foundation for understanding design performance across the spectrum of conditions FleetEdge has measured.

Where current matters, current is read.

Atmosphere is one axis. On the five IRC offshore classics — Cowes, Fastnet, Rolex Middle Sea, Sydney–Hobart, and RORC Caribbean 600 — the water is the other. Tidal gates split fleets by hours, not minutes, and a weather-only record under-describes the race.

HYCOM Ocean FleetEdge pairs the atmospheric record with HYCOM ocean-current reanalysis timed to each running's actual window — the two layers sit side by side in the record rather than in competition. The current engine's construction is taught once, on the Ocean Intelligence page.

Current intelligence is flagship-scoped at launch across those five races; atmospheric coverage is corpus-wide. See Ocean Intelligence for the race-by-race current treatment.

What the weather record can and cannot say. ERA5 enrichment says what conditions a race was sailed in, so design evidence can be read in context. It cannot attribute any single result to weather alone, and an archetype-condition reading is an association at its stated scope — never a verdict on a boat or a crew.

FleetEdge alters no rating and no score — ORC remains the rating and scoring authority.

The conditions. The archetype. The insight.

Weather intelligence transforms race results into actionable design and crew analysis.