Sailing ship routing and dynamic programming

This paper deals with the general sailing ship routing problem. A general model for this problem must first build a discrete routing network covering the navigation area and then compute a good route while taking into account the weather forecast data over the race makespan. In this paper the authors assume that the routing network has already been determined and they focus on the design of an algorithm to compute a good route. The basic problem, which assumes the weather conditions known in advance for the whole race period, is solved by dynamic programming. When the weather forecast data are only available for a limited time ahead, a new heuristic has been developed. As a conclusion, the authors show the output of the method applied to the end of the last Vendée-Globe Challenge race.