Launched around 15 years ago by Auckland’s Jon Bilger, PredictWind is a subscription-based global wind/weather forecasting service – accessed via a phone/tablet/laptop app. With various ‘feature levels’ corresponding to a tiered price structure, it now has more than a million users worldwide.
Getting to this point, says Bilger, has been quite a journey.
A mechanical engineer, Bilger is also a former America’s Cup sailor with decades of successful dinghy and keelboat racing experience (underscored by numerous national titles). Inevitably, second-guessing the vagaries of the wind became embedded in his DNA.
During his AC tenure as Weather Team Manager with Alinghi (2003 – 2010) he began mulling over the possibility of adapting the weather/wind data used by professional sailors – and packaging it for club and recreational sailors in an easy-touse format. PredictWind’s ‘cat’s paws’ began to form.
“I knew there had to be a way to integrate satellite technology and GPS with existing weather forecasting models and reasoned such a marriage
