Wave characteristics estimation by GPS receivers installed on a sailboat travelling off-shore

The paper describes a measurement campaign carried out by means of GPS receivers installed on board of a moving sailboat and the application for the estimation of the local wave properties. The movements of the boat, as reconstructed using the present approach, may be used for many useful practical purposes, as for example the improvement of autopilots or for real time control systems of ships, to analyze and improve the performance of race sailboats, to estimate the local properties of the waves. An application of the method to estimate the wave properties during a storm in the Western Mediterranean Sea is presented, and the results compared against two sets of hindcast data and wave buoy records.