Weather routing companies and performance reports
What a routing company produces, reanalysis against observation, the evidential weight of its report, and how a binding-findings clause gets read down.
A weather routing company supplies route advice during a voyage and, afterwards, a performance report used to support or defend a claim under a speed and consumption warranty. The report is built from analysed and reanalysed meteorological fields rather than from observations at the ship, which is the source of its evidential weakness and of its consistency advantage.
BIMCO has warned against clauses making such reports conclusive, and treats them as evaluations rather than statements of fact. The full article will cover what the report contains, the difference between forecast, analysis and reanalysis data, the resolution question, how a binding-findings clause is construed narrowly by tribunals, and the circumstances in which a tribunal has preferred the report to the ship’s own logs.