[bobetter]

While in theory, tidal routing would be nice the reality is that any implementation would ultimately by flawed. Tidal Current data are predictions and as such, any attempt at routing based on this data would be at some point, inaccurate. Now, having said that, any Nav SW that is capable of steering a track to a waypoint is inherently compensating for tidal vectors, in real time. The problem with using a polars based Nav system is that polars are performance targets based on wind only. In some situations, tidal offset (which will vary) will overcome any gains. Indeed, in some cases, depending of course on the tidal vector, sailing a simple Waypoint track and trimming for best SOG/VMG will be faster than using polars.