Will Brocklebank makes passage planning easy with his bespoke AI wing man
Like a lot of boaters, my passage planning usually starts with a cup of tea, a weather forecast and a vague sense of optimism. But ahead of a planned circumnavigation of Britain via all the rock lighthouses in Ennor, my Rustler 41, I wanted something more rigorous and fun.
I use AI tools professionally, so applying them to passage planning felt natural, particularly given the launch of tools like OpenClaw – a free, open-source platform that lets you set up your own private AI assistant, which you can then programme to help with all sorts of things. And top of my list was getting the most out of Ennor.
Building the knowledge base
What I did first was find a number of high-quality online marine data sources covering tides, weather, sea conditions and navigational routes. I then connected these to a spreadsheet I’d built of over 150 locations of interest around the British Isles – rock lighthouse sites, ports of refuge, and 20 or 30 of my favourite spots on the south Cornwall coast and the Isles of Scilly.
For each location, I’d spent time encoding the kind of local knowledge that normally lives in your head or in a dog-eared pilot book. The Helford River, for instance, is a wonderful place to stop – except in a brisk south-easterly, when the first half nautical mile gets extremely rough.
It advises him where (and when) is best to go
Equally, when there’s a strong south-easterly blowing, you might want to switch to St Mawes as your preferred anchorage, because its geography makes it exceptionally well protected. I systematised all of this and handed it to the AI so it could start making intelligent suggestions about where to go given the forecast conditions.
Talking to the boat brain
Here’s where it got really exciting for a non-coder like me. Using AI coding tools like Claude Code, I was able to literally dictate instructions to my computer on how all of this information should be surfaced. The result is that I can send a WhatsApp message to my AI assistant – who I’ve called Etta – and ask her what conditions are like at any given location, or whether my travel plans make sense.
Given where I’m starting from and where I’m heading, I can ask for fallback locations if the weather on my passage is changing, or if I simply want to visit a new harbour I haven’t been to before. There’s also a dedicated web page, which Etta coded entirely by herself, that shows me which locations are preferred for the current weather window of up to six hours.
Will can ask his personalised AI assistant whether his passage plans makes sense
It gives a tactical summary, including a comfort rating, which I set up by telling it about Ennor’s hull shape, weight, and windage characteristics. It runs algorithms against the significant wave height and wave period to tell me whether a passage will be comfortable, bearable or best avoided.
I’ve also uploaded every single technical manual for the equipment on the boat. They’ve been digitised and indexed so that if I have a question about the water pump model or need to consult a wiring diagram, I can ask Etta and she’ll tell me. Essentially, all the working knowledge of the boat is available at my fingertips, backed by far more research than I could achieve alone.
Keeping a log
I’ve also created a journaling function so that I can dictate log entries to Etta while underway. Combined with the data from my PredictWind logger, I end up with a rich, annotated diary to spark joyful memories in the future. None of this removes the importance of proper passage planning. But on those mornings when you’re keen to get on the water, this gets you up and running with the right information really quickly. And once you’re out, it’s good to know there’s a helpful bot in your pocket if you need one.
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