I started development of LuckGrib while sailing in New Zealand, around December 2014. Over the next four months I dove deeply back into software development and the bulk of LuckGrib was formed.

I formed a beta program early in 2015 and had help from many other people who were using early copies of LuckGrib and providing me feedback.

Toward the end of the beta program, once the program had started to resolve itself into what was closer to its final form, I invited David Burch into the beta program.

I have never met David and only know him through the excellent books he writes. Through my activities as a sea kayaker and now as a sailor, I ended up reading three or four of his books, and it struck me that they were always very well written and informative.

David is the author of the excellent weather book, Modern Marine Weather, which I have read cover to cover several times. When I started as a sailor I had a lot to learn, and books such as David’s were enormously useful to me.

It turns out that David has a Mac and uses it daily in his work. He agreed to join the beta program for LuckGrib and was able to quickly provide me with some feedback on the application. He is deeply involved in modern weather forecasting, using a wide variety of sources. My impression is that he’s a little leading edge.

David has a blog, writing on all sorts of topics of interest to the weather community.  He recently wrote a review of LuckGrib and provided me with a quote that I can (and have) used in the description of the app on the Apple App store.

The quote he provided is:

“The LuckGrib viewer is elegant, fast, and functional…. a must have app for all sailors using Macs for weather work.” —David Burch, Director of Starpath School of Navigation and author of Modern Marine Weather.

His review can be found at: http://davidburchnavigation.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-grib-viewer-for-macs.html