SeaPeople Freed the Wind
Announcements
How Free the Wind Came to Be
Free the Wind started with a problem we were trying to solve inside SeaPeople. What followed was a little unexpected: a standalone marine weather platform and a promise to keep premium weather free for 100 years.
It happened organically, almost accidentally. And it all started with wanting to help boaters decide where to go next.
The Piece That Was Missing
This past summer, we launched a new set of SeaPeople features built around 15 million nm of real journeys. Route Intelligence showed where boaters actually went, the destinations they visited and the routes connecting them. Our Destinations and Places map helped people discover anchorages, marinas, provisioning stops and places to eat ashore.
Together, these features could help you plan your next adventure. But there was still a missing piece.
You could find an anchorage, explore the route and see what other boaters had done. Then you had to open a separate weather app to answer the question that could change your entire plan: Will this be a good place to go when I actually get there?
We wanted weather to become part of that decision. For an anchorage recommendation to account for tomorrow’s wind. For a route to make sense for the conditions along the way. For everything to work together.
So our engineers started looking at ways to bring weather into SeaPeople.
Building More Than We Had Planned
So our engineers started looking at ways to bring weather into SeaPeople.
After exploring existing weather services and APIs, they began digging into the publicly available forecast data that powers many weather products. What they found opened up far more possibilities than we had expected.
Longer forecasts. Hourly detail. Wind, gusts, waves and precipitation. Much of the underlying information was already freely available. The work was in processing it and turning it into something clear and useful.
And our engineers kept building.
They created a route planner that lets you see the forecast along your planned journey. They added personal comfort thresholds, so you can set the wind and wave conditions you’re comfortable with and see where a forecast exceeds them. They built side-by-side model comparisons to make differences easier to spot, and a departure window tool to help you identify when conditions best match your preferences.
What If We Just Gave It Away For Free?
At that point, we had the weather tools we needed to support SeaPeople. We also realised we had built the foundations of something that could stand on its own.
That raised a bigger question: What if we just gave it away?
We had built this technology for another purpose. Making it available as a standalone weather platform suddenly felt possible. And Riley and Elayna of Sailing la Vagabonde quickly said "can we make this free?" They had been hearing about weather frustrations from their community of followers for years. And knew, this could be a moment for the industry to change.
We kept thinking about the tools people now expect to use for free. Looking up directions. Making a video call to family on the other side of the world. Technology had changed what was accessible to everyone. Could premium weather be next?
Our answer was simple: we could make this available, so we wanted to. But we understood why people were sceptical. We needed to make our intention clear.
That’s where the promise of 100 years of free premium weather came from.
This was built to be something people could keep using. The promise makes that commitment explicit: premium marine weather, free for 100 years.
For us, the reason goes beyond the technology. Better access to forecasts and planning tools can help more people understand the conditions, consider their options and make better-informed decisions on the water. We believe those tools should be available to everyone, whether they have ever paid for weather or not.
Now go share the movement with the world. Tell all your friends who are using tools without all the weather data, or paying for something that could be free.
GO SHARE IT. Let's FREE THE WIND
