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DublinBayBuoy.com

Changelog · notable releases and fixes

v3.1 - current

v3.33.1 2026-08-27 calm under failure

fixForecast retries now pace themselves. If the forecast service was unreachable, one phone could get stuck refetching in a tight loop, burning battery and data. Failed fetches now wait a minute before trying again.
opsAnonymous error reporting is capped per device, so a misbehaving session can never flood our analytics again.

v3.32.0 2026-08-23 steer the difference

featCOG sits directly over your course to steer. The two bearings stack digit against digit, so how far off you are reads instantly: 057 over 032, come down 25. Speed keeps its own big block beside them.
fixA blocked location permission now explains itself. Browsers quietly flip sites to Blocked (one-time grants expire, a dismissed prompt sticks) and the old error read like the app was broken. It now tells you the fix: the icon beside the address bar, Permissions, allow Location.
fixThe Mark calculator link on the dashboard dropped its NEW badge. Three weeks in, it is furniture, not news.

v3.31.0 2026-08-23 built for sunlight

featThe mark calculator is light by default now. Dark looked handsome ashore and unreadable in sun on open water. Everything around the chart is now bright with dark text; the satellite chart itself is unchanged. The moon button in the map tools switches dark back on for the evening races, and your choice is remembered.
featBig numbers while recording. Speed and course over ground are nearly twice the size, and the next-mark line, your course to steer, gets its own full-width row just as large. Readable at arm's length on a heeling boat.

v3.30.0 2026-08-23 yellow finds its buoy

featThe yellow start mark now plots. DBSC's published data never says where the yellow limit mark is, so choosing it used to be noted but not drawn. A survey sail and DBSC (thanks John Leahy) confirmed what the spacing already hinted: the yellow limit mark is the big yellow X (Turning) buoy, fourth in the evenly spaced line of limit marks off the hut. Pick yellow and the course now starts there, first leg drawn like any other colour. Courses that genuinely round X mid-course (Thu Blue's K courses) are unaffected.

v3.29.2 2026-08-23 banners behave, screens stay lit

fixThe race strip no longer stretches tall on narrow phones. With the Worlds links on board, small screens and large text sizes squeezed the announcement into a one-word-per-line tower. The links now drop neatly onto their own row below the text when space runs out.
fixThe screen stays awake while recording a GPS track. A survey sail this morning lost half an hour of track in two pieces because the screen went dark and the browser paused position updates. The mark calculator now holds a screen wake lock during recording and takes it back whenever you return to the app.

v3.29.1 2026-08-23 the channel where it actually is

fixThe card name stays readable on narrow phones. On tight screens the course title was squeezing "Alpha 5 · Sat CV" back down to "Alpha…", hiding which card the course came from. The leg totals now give way first; the callsign and its card never shrink away.
fixThe no-go channel no longer cuts through the race area. The first drawing ran the shipping channel straight from Poolbeg to the Dublin Bay Buoy, which sliced across the top of the course. It is now the exact area from the notice of race: Poolbeg Lighthouse along channel marks 8, 6 and 4 to the Dublin Bay Buoy and back along 1, 3, 5 and 7 to North Bull Lighthouse, drawn from the real buoy positions. It passes north of every racing mark, as it does on the water. The race area is now the smooth tilted ellipse from the sailing instructions, and the chart opens framed so the whole picture is on screen.

v3.29.0 2026-08-22 the Worlds come to the bay

featThe ILCA Worlds are on the mark calculator's chart. Dublin Bay hosts the ILCA 7 Men's World Championship (23-30 Aug) and the ILCA 6 Women's (5-12 Sep). The yellow ring shows the race area from the sailing instructions, drawn onto the real mark positions, and the red corridor is the Dublin Port shipping channel, which support boats must keep clear of. The info sheet links the live tracking, results and event site. The overlay takes itself down when the Worlds end.
featThe race strip knows the Worlds too. On championship days it announces the noon first gun with the forecast and tide for the start hour, and carries Worlds live and Results links next to the mark calculator.
opsThe mark calculator is now open to search engines, in time for visiting sailors to find it.

v3.28.0 2026-08-22 race day, every day

featThe race strip is always on the dashboard now. On a race day it announces the day's window with the start-hour forecast and tide, as before. Every other day it points at the next one, "Next: Thursday evening racing from 18:00", so the mark calculator and the race-window conditions are one tap away all week.
opsThe mark calculator feature card has retired: with the strip up every day, the calculator link no longer needs a stand-in.

v3.27.0 2026-08-22 the right card, on the right day

featThe course title now names its card. A loaded course reads "Alpha 5 · Sat CV" instead of just "Alpha 5", so there is no wondering which of the day's cards it came from when you compare it against the printed one.
featThe Cards picker opens on the day's card. Tuesday opens on Tue Hut, Thursday on Thu Blue with Red one tap away, Saturday on Sat Hut. If you have used a card before, yours still comes first.
fixBack-to-back recordings stay separate. Starting a second GPS recording in the same visit used to keep the first race's trail in the buffer, so the day's second track carried the first inside it. Each recording now starts clean.

v3.26.0 2026-08-22 the start row stays put

fixThe start-mark colours no longer vanish. The row used to disappear the moment a course was edited by hand, or never appear for a course built by tapping marks. Now it shows for any course: the chosen colour lives in the course itself, so it survives edits, undo and shared links.
fixThe GPS trail is properly bold now: nearly twice as heavy again, with a stronger halo, after the first pass still washed out over sunlit water.
featAnonymised tracks now help improve the tool. As the banner and privacy policy describe: when you stop a recording, a copy with positions, speeds and times only, and nothing that identifies you, is stored to build race performance stats. Your GPX stays yours.

v3.25.0 2026-08-22 GPS you can find, a track you can see

featGPS has its own button on the chart, above Share, instead of a small icon in the tool column. It glows red with a blinking dot while recording. The information banner now appears only the first time; after that the button starts and stops tracking directly.
fixYour track is easier to see. The boat marker gets the same dark disc as the wind dials, and the track line behind it is twice as heavy with a dark halo, so where you have been reads against sunlit water. The speed and course numbers are bigger too.

v3.24.0 2026-08-22 the mark they point at, and where you actually went

featPick the day's start mark for hut starts. The start line runs through one of the limit marks off the hut, and which colour is only shown on the day. Load a hut course and a Start mark row appears: tap orange, black or green and that mark becomes the first point of the course, first leg included. Yellow has no published position anywhere in DBSC's data, so choosing it is noted on the share rather than plotted. The Black Start's position comes from DBSC's machine-readable marks file, cross-checked against the bearings table before every build. Thanks to Peter Richardson for the idea.
featGPS is on. Tap the arrow, then Enable GPS, and you get a live track: speed and course over ground, plus bearing and distance to your next mark, moving on automatically as you round each one. Stop it after racing and the track is offered as a GPX file. It is experimental and optional, part of building sail race performance stats; the banner and the privacy policy spell out that your track stays on your phone and that only completely anonymised tracks may ever be used, solely to improve the feature.
secPrivacy policy updated with a GPS section covering exactly that, before the feature went live.
featShared links carry the start. Send Echo 5 with the orange start chosen and it opens that way.

v3.23.1 2026-08-20 a mouse is not a finger

fixClicking marks with a mouse now works first time. On a laptop or desktop the chart's pan and zoom handling was quietly stealing the click before the mark ever saw it, so picking a course meant clicking the same buoy over and over. Marks and wind dials now respond to the press itself, on any device. Thanks to the sailor who reported it.

v3.23.0 2026-08-20 Echo 5, plotted before the gun

featDBSC course cards are built into the Mark Calculator. When the race officer signals "Echo 5", tap Cards, pick your start's card and the course, and the whole thing is on the chart: every leg's bearing and distance, each mark tagged p or s for port or starboard rounding in the card's own red and green. All five 2026 cards are in there: Saturday committee vessel and hut, Thursday Blue and Red, Tuesday hut.
featThe picker knows where the wind is. The wind direction letters run A at north around to R, and the sector matching the live breeze is flagged, which is usually the row the race officer is choosing from too.
featShared card courses keep their name. Send Echo 5 to the crew and it opens as Echo 5, roundings and all, not just a string of marks.
opsTrust, but verify. The presets are read from DBSC's published course cards, and the build cross-checks two independent DBSC sources against each other and refuses to ship if they disagree. The official card still wins on the day.

v3.22.1 2026-08-14 failing quietly, and saying why

perfA dead data feed no longer gets hammered. When a refresh fails, the app now waits longer before trying again (2, 4, 8, then 16 minutes) instead of retrying every minute all day. Coming back to the tab still refreshes straight away. Easier on your battery and data, and on the services at the other end.
opsError reports now name the service that failed. Our anonymous error counter previously recorded only a status code, so we could not tell whether the buoy feed or the forecast provider was having a bad day. Now it says which, so outages get diagnosed faster.

v3.22.0 2026-08-08 the whole bay, or just your bit of it

featShared cards show the bay, not just your marks. The picture now takes in every wind station on the chart along with the course, so whoever you send it to can see the conditions and where the course sits. A short course no longer zooms in so far that there is nothing but water around it.
featHide a wind station you do not want. The two harbour stations sit almost on top of each other, so any of the three can be put away from the wind panel. Hiding one takes it off the chart, out of shared cards, and pulls the shared picture in tighter around what is left. Your choice is remembered.

v3.21.0 2026-08-08 as much chart as you want

featDrag the course panel to size the chart. A handle above the course lets you pull it down for a near full-screen chart, leave it half and half, or pull it up to read the legs with the chart reduced to a strip. Tap the handle to step through the three. It remembers what you chose. Thanks to John Leahy for the suggestion.
fixUndo and Clear look like buttons now. They were small grey text and easy to miss entirely, to the point that people asked whether a clear function existed.
fixA shared card always frames your course. It used to copy whatever the chart happened to be showing, so zooming in to tap a mark and then sharing gave you that corner instead of the course. The picture is now composed from the course itself, so it looks the same however you were holding the chart.

v3.20.1 2026-08-08 taps that actually land

fixTapping a mark sometimes did nothing. The mark lit up but no leg appeared, so a course could not be built without tapping several times. Anything but a perfectly still finger was being treated as a drag of the chart and the tap thrown away. A tap now allows the small amount of movement a real thumb makes.

v3.20.0 2026-08-08 the race strip, read properly

fixThe race-day strip read as a negative wind speed. The separator in front of the forecast sat right against the number, so "6 kt" looked like "minus 6 kt". Each fact now gets its own line: the race time, then the forecast, then the tide.
featThe forecast says what it is. It now reads "Forecast: 6 kt gust 17 from SW" rather than an unlabelled string of figures, so it is not mistaken for the live reading in the tiles underneath.
featThe link is called the mark calculator, which says what it does: bearings and distances between the DBSC racing marks.

v3.19.2 2026-08-08 cards that say where they came from

featShared course cards now carry the logo and address in the top corner, so a card forwarded around a crew thread tells people where to find the planner. The satellite imagery credit moved to the footer alongside the time.

v3.19.1 2026-08-08 share, where you can see it

fixThe course planner's Share button was too easy to miss. It was small grey text next to two greyed-out buttons. It is now the same blue Share button you already know from the main site, sitting on the chart itself.

v3.19.0 2026-08-08 wind up front, courses worth sending

featLive wind is on when you open the course planner. Tap any dial for speed, gust, direction, air and sea temperature where the station reports it, and how long ago that reading came in. The buoy reports hourly and the shore stations every few minutes, so the ages now tell you which number to trust.
featShare sends a picture. The Share button now makes a card showing your course on the chart with the bearing and distance for every leg and the current wind at all three stations, ready to drop into a crew thread. Where a phone cannot share images it saves the card and copies the details instead.
featThe planner is easier to find from the main site, not just on race days.
fixGPS is switched off for now. Tapping it used to show a browser error. Position tracking and race analysis are still experimental, so the button says so rather than failing.

v3.18.0 2026-08-08 steadier chart, clearer wind

fixThe chart no longer twitches when you tap a mark. The course panel used to grow with every leg you added, which squeezed the map and made it jump. It now keeps its height and the table scrolls inside it, so the chart stays put while you build a course.
featWind direction is much easier to read. Each station now carries a solid dart on a larger dial instead of a thin line, so you can take the direction in at a glance rather than squinting at it in daylight.
fixThe Dublin Bay Buoy fits on screen. It sits north east of every racing mark, so its wind reading used to fall off the edge. Switching the wind on now widens the view to take in all three stations, unless you have already framed the chart yourself. The target button reframes everything.

v3.17.0 2026-08-07 wind you can see moving

featLive wind on the course planner now moves. Streaks drift past each station at a rate set by the measured wind, so the map reads as breeze or blowing before you read the number, and the reading names the wind the way you would say it: "W 10 g14" for a westerly at 10 knots gusting 14. A station whose data has gone stale stops moving, so anything animating is genuinely live.
fixThe wind arrows pointed the wrong way. They aimed into the wind rather than the way it is blowing. They now point downwind, matching the streaks, and the compass point in the label removes any doubt.

v3.16.0 2026-08-07 plan your course

featA DBSC course planner, at racing.dublinbaybuoy.com. Tap the racing marks in the order you will round them and you get the bearing and distance for every leg, the running total, and a course you can share as a link. Every position, bearing and distance comes straight from DBSC's published Marks, Bearings and Distances table, so the numbers match the sheet in your cockpit. The chart behind the marks is a satellite view: it is there to help you picture the course, not to navigate by.
featOptional extras in the planner. Live wind arrows at the buoy, the East Pier and the harbour, and a GPS mode showing your speed over ground with the bearing and distance to your next mark. Save the track as a GPX file when you are finished. Both are off until you switch them on, and the track stays on your phone.
featThe race-day strip now opens the planner instead of the DBSC website.

v3.13.0 2026-07-31 cleaner station views

featStations only show what they measure. Wave, sea state and water temp boxes disappear (rather than grey out) for land stations; a green dot in the status line shows the station is reporting live, amber when stale. The data credit links to hub.dublinbaybuoy.com, which now has its own page explaining the hub and listing every live station.

v3.12.0 2026-07-31 stats for every station

featThe Stats tab now follows the selected station. Wind rose, records and the 24-hour summary are computed from that station's own hub history (the buoy keeps its deep archive; records for stations note the date their record began). Buoy-only service stats hide for stations.
fixSharing keeps your station. The Share button now sends a link that opens the exact station you were viewing, with that station's conditions in the message. The station dropdown is easier to spot (amber outline and arrow) and no longer crowds the site name, and the East Pier dot sits on the pier wall at the bend.

v3.11.0 2026-07-31 source always in sight

featThe station selector moved into the top bar. It sits beside the site name on every tab, so you always see (and can switch) which station is feeding the app. The "Latest data" clock now shows the selected station's own observation time; East Pier and the partner club update every few minutes rather than hourly.

v3.10.0 2026-07-31 every station gets real history

featTrends now shows the selected station's own observations. Pick East Pier or North Kish and the observed lines are that station's readings from our marine hub (raw for short ranges, hourly and daily averages beyond), clearly labelled with the station name. Metrics a station never measures are greyed out instead of silently showing buoy data, and the forecast label says which position it is computed for.
fixA stack of small correctness fixes from a full code review: orange gust streaks on all stations, no more false "feed offline" grey-out while viewing a live station or after browsing the 365d range, offline app shell now updates with each release, safer behaviour when the map or data services are briefly unreachable.

v3.9.1 2026-07-31 cleaner station names

fixStation names are just the place now. The picker says "North Kish", not the full data-source pedigree; attribution lives on the station details card and the developers page. A pass over all site text tidied punctuation throughout.

v3.9.0 2026-07-31 the station switcher reaches everyone

featThe station switcher is now on the main site. Pick between the Dublin Bay Buoy, East Pier (Dún Laoghaire), North Kish and South Burford at the top of the Now tab - live readings, wind circles, maps and the forecast all follow your choice, with an honest “updated X min ago” strip. All data flows through our marine hub at hub.dublinbaybuoy.com. One more station is in beta pending its owner’s approval.
fixNo more empty selector box on the main site while the feature was beta-gated.

v3.8.2 2026-07-31 tides back + honest greys

fixThe Tides tab works again - its rendering code was accidentally removed along with the Tidal Streams experiment.
fixTiles grey out when a station doesn’t measure something (waves and sea temp at the partner club or East Pier), the forecast labels say which position the forecast is computed for, and the East Pier dot now sits on the actual East Pier - it was tagged on the West Pier.
opsData licensing spelled out: Irish Lights MetOcean data comes via data.gov.ie under CC BY 4.0 - full source and licence list on the developers page.

v3.8.1 2026-07-31 station map polish

fixStation maps tuned per station. Smaller position dots; the partner club gets the harbour close-up (dot on the clubhouse) beside a Howth-to-Lambay view; East Pier gets the full Dún Laoghaire harbour with the dot on the pier hut; the offshore beacons (North Kish, South Burford) show a single bay panel with their dot. Wind streaks now clear when the selected station has no live wind instead of showing the buoy’s.

v3.8.0 2026-07-31 a real station switcher on beta

featThe beta picker now switches the whole dashboard between live stations. A prominent selector at the top of the Now tab lists the public Dublin-area stations on our marine hub - Dublin Bay Buoy, a partner yacht club (beta), East Pier, North Kish and South Burford. Picking one drives the tiles, the wind circles, the satellite framing and the forecast from that station’s readings and position, with an honest “updated X min ago” strip. a partner yacht club (beta)’s Davis station is live - their data flows through hub.dublinbaybuoy.com. This replaces the v3.7.0 harbour-view dropdown, which changed the scenery but not the numbers.
opsThe Tidal Streams experiment has left beta. The tap-to-place-a-boat tidal map never graduated; per the new beta lifecycle it’s deleted rather than parked. The tide tables and charts are unaffected.

v3.7.0 2026-07-31 Howth on the beta site

featA local-view picker is back on beta - now with a partner yacht club (beta). A dropdown on the Now tab switches the left satellite circle between ten harbours from Skerries to Greystones, shareable as links like /#howth. Picking Howth swaps the bay circle for a wider view stretching from Dublin Bay up to Lambay Island, shows live wind, gusts, temperature and pressure straight from the a partner yacht club (beta) weather station in the harbour, and computes the 10-day forecast for the station’s own position instead of the buoy’s.

v3.6.0 2026-07-31 beta spring-clean

opsThe Forecast Drift preview has left the beta site. It was an experiment in visualising how successive model runs disagree; the Trends charts and the accuracy sheet cover the useful part of that story. (Its API surface was retired shortly after.)

v3.5.0 2026-07-30 wind direction on the Trends tab

featWind direction, observed and forecast, now on the Wind view. A chart under the gusts shows the compass bearing the wind blows from over time - solid line is the buoy, dashed is the model, overlapping through the observed window like the other charts - so you can see a forecast shift (say WSW → S) running early or late. N/E/S/W marked on the axis; the line breaks rather than jumping the scale when the wind veers through north. (v3.5.1–.2 - first cut used direction arrows and future-only forecast; a full overlaid line proved much clearer.)

v3.4.2 2026-07-29 snappier range switching + the forecast line always shows up

perfSwitching chart ranges is instant now. The app keeps each data view (live / hourly / daily) cached for a while instead of re-downloading on every tap between 6h, 24h and longer ranges.
fixThe dotted forecast line no longer goes missing. If the forecast data had been cleared in the background (or its first download failed), opening Trends showed only the solid observed line until a later refresh. The chart now fetches the forecast itself whenever it’s absent or stale.

v3.4.1 2026-07-29 longer ranges now look forward too

featThe forecast now grows with the range you pick. Choosing 7d shows the next 7 days of forecast alongside the last 7 days observed (30d/365d show the full 10-day model run). Previously anything past 3 days only added history.
featRace-day strip links to DBSC. Tap DBSC ↗ on the strip for the official racing programme and results at dbsc.ie.

v3.4.0 2026-07-29 the app now answers back - tap anything, works offline, race-day aware

featTap a dashboard number to see its trend. The four big tiles (wind, gust, waves, water temp) now open that metric’s chart directly - plenty of you were already tapping them expecting exactly that.
featPinch, drag and double-tap to zoom the enlarged maps. The big bay and marina satellite views now zoom to pier level - the wind streaks scale with the imagery.
featRace-day strip. On Thursdays and Saturdays the dashboard shows the forecast wind and next tide for the race window at a glance; tap it for the 6-hour wind chart.
featWorks offline. If you open the app with no signal, it now shows the last readings your phone received - clearly labelled with when they’re from - instead of dashes.
featShare button. The corner button now shares the current conditions and a link via your phone’s share sheet (it replaces the old Feedback button - feedback lives in the footer and the accuracy panel now).
fixWind & gust streaks are brighter and thicker on the map circles, so the direction reads at a glance.
fixTrends opens on the last 24 hours instead of 3 days - by far the most-used view.
fixThe welcome hint now tidies itself away after a few seconds instead of waiting to be dismissed.

v3.2.0 2026-06-14 tides now match the official Dublin Port tables

featTide times & heights now come straight from Dublin Port Company’s official tide tables for Dublin (North Wall). They now match the printed harbour-authority tables and your tide book to the minute, instead of a global ocean model that ran a little early and low in the bay. High/low water times, heights and the live state all use the same trusted source.
featHeights are now above Chart Datum, the same reference the Dublin Port tables and Admiralty charts use, so a height you read here matches the tables exactly.
fixClearer about what the number is. The Tides tab now states these are predicted heights for the port - not the projected water level at the buoy itself.

v3.1.0 2026-06-14 clearer wind charts + steadier map circles

featWind & gusts together on Trends. The Trends tab now has a single Wind view that shows two charts stacked - Average Wind on top, Gust Speed below - each clearly labelled, so it’s obvious which is which. No more guessing whether “Wind” meant the average or the gusts.
fixMarina & bay map circles load reliably. The two satellite circles on the Now tab now use our own cached imagery instead of fetching from a third-party map service on every visit, so they no longer come up blank when that service is slow or unreachable.
featStale-data notice. If the Irish Lights buoy feed goes quiet, the dashboard now greys out the affected readings and shows when the last one arrived - so you’re never looking at hours-old wind as if it were current. Tides and forecast stay live.
featContact link. Added a [email protected] link in the footer and across the site.

v3.0

v3.0.0 2026-05-19 install as an app on your phone

featInstall as a phone app. Dublin Bay Buoy is now a Progressive Web App. On Android, Chrome will prompt you to install it - or use the menu → “Install app”. On iPhone, tap Share → “Add to Home Screen”. Either way it launches full-screen, just like a native app.
featOffline support. The app shell is cached so the interface loads even when you’re out of signal. Live data still needs a connection, but you won’t stare at a blank screen.

v2.14

v2.14.0 2026-05-14 data accuracy info + AIS receiver upgrade

featData accuracy info panel. Tap the info icon on the dashboard to learn how our readings relate to the CIL MetOcean website - same instrument, same data, but with different update timing and post-processing.
featUpgraded AIS receiver. Moved the live AIS receiver to a dedicated SDR antenna with better line-of-sight to the buoy, improving reception reliability.

v2.13

v2.13.7 2026-05-13 readings now stay accurate after Irish Lights revisions

fixStale wind/wave values corrected automatically. Irish Lights routinely revise buoy readings after initial publication. Previously those corrections were never picked up, so the site could show outdated values permanently. Now every hourly poll re-checks the full day's data and applies any revisions.

v2.13.6 2026-05-10 6h chart shows data when buoy is out of range

fix6h chart always shows observed data. When the buoy is out of AIS range, the 6-hour chart now falls back to MetOcean hourly readings instead of showing a blank chart.
fixFuture MetOcean readings no longer appear as observed. The chart now clips observed data at the current time, so upcoming-hour rows from the MetOcean API don't create a false flat tail on the line.
fixChart line no longer sits on the floor. Added a 10% grace buffer below the y-axis minimum so the lowest data points have breathing room.

v2.13.3 2026-05-08 proper icon + installable on home screen

featProper site icon - a wave logo now shows in browser tabs, bookmarks, and Google search results instead of the generic globe.
featAdd to Home Screen. On iOS or Android, "Add to Home Screen" now installs DublinBayBuoy as a standalone app with its own icon and full-screen launch.

v2.13.1 2026-05-08 brand strip fits on phones

fix"Latest data from…" timestamp no longer gets cut off on narrow phone screens - the brand strip now stacks the URL above the timestamp when there isn't room side-by-side.

v2.13.0 2026-05-07 share-ready brand strip + tighter feedback flow

featSticky DublinBayBuoy.com strip on every page - the URL is on every screenshot now, so when you share a wind chart in a crew chat, anyone can find their way back here.
featLatest-data label. The timestamp now reads "Latest data from …" so it's obvious it's the time of the last reading, not wall-clock now.
featLive AIS indicator hops up to the strip's right side when the boat's broadcasting fresh data - green pulse for live, amber for stale, gone for hourly-only.
featSettings (Aa) is now a floating button, present on every page, stacked above the Feedback button.
featFeedback flow tightened. No more accidental "Feature request" - you have to pick Feature or Bug before Send unlocks. Live character count below the box.
featFooter "About" link is now How to - same destination, clearer label.

v2.12

v2.12.0 2026-05-07 Telegram bot is now website-first

featThe Telegram channel @DublinBayBuoy keeps posting hourly - that part is unchanged.
opsPersonal bot commands retired. /now, /at, /alert, /stats, /subscribe have moved to the website - the dashboard, 7-day trends, and per-device alert settings live at dublinbaybuoy.com with a better UX. /feedback still works in DM if you prefer it.
fixIf you'd set a wind-threshold alert via the bot, it's no longer active - sorry for the silence. Reach out via /feedback if you want it back; we'll prioritise per-device alerts on the website if there's demand.

v2.11

v2.11.1 2026-05-07 font size: as big as you like

featNo more upper limit on the text-size slider. If you want bigger, you got it - keep tapping A+ until it's the size you need.

v2.11.0 2026-05-07 brand · share-friendly · one Mini App

featThe site name now reads DublinBayBuoy.com on every page header - so when you screenshot the dashboard and share it on a WhatsApp/Telegram crew chat, anyone can find their way back here.
featNicer link previews when sharing the site on Slack, Telegram, iMessage, or social - proper title, description, and a Dublin Bay map preview image now show up.
opsBeta and prod Mini App are no longer two files that drift out of sync - the beta is generated from the prod source, so every fix lands on both at once.

v2.10

v2.10.3 2026-05-07 no double posts, no spinner of doom

fixHourly channel posts no longer duplicate when the database hiccups - once a reading has been sent for the hour, that hour stays sent.
fixWind alert no longer spam-fires during a brief outage. If you've blocked the bot, your alert is now removed automatically instead of retrying forever.
fixSlow networks fail cleanly - fetches give up after 12 s instead of leaving the dashboard stuck on a spinner.
secTightened the feedback endpoint's signature check (constant-time comparison) and removed a leftover internal hostname.

v2.10.2 2026-05-06 cleanup + resilience

fixBrief upstream blips no longer create gaps in the reading history - readings caught mid-hiccup are now queued and stored once the dust settles.

v2.10.0 2026-05-06 privacy + opt-out

secDisable analytics on this device - a one-click opt-out is now on the Privacy page. Setting persists in your browser; we also respect the Do Not Track setting automatically.
secPrivacy policy rewritten - short, accurate, no legalese. Lists what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and how to opt out or request deletion.
featAnonymised session replays - a small fraction of sessions (15 %, capped at 5 minutes) are recorded with all text masked, so we can spot broken layouts. The feedback sheet is fully blocked from recording. Recordings auto-delete after 60 days. Disabled if you've opted out.
fixFeedback button works again - sending feature requests or bug reports from the website now succeeds (it was silently failing for some visitors).

v2.9

v2.9.0 2026-04-30 readable trends + targeted feedback

featDay-of-week markers (Mon, Tue, Wed…) on the Trends chart between 24 h and 7 d, so a glance tells you which day each peak landed on.
featForecast line now picks up a darker shade of the metric's own colour - readable against the live curve and no longer clashing with the gale-warning yellow.
featChart legend swatches now match the active metric, so "Observed" and "Forecast" are visually identifiable instead of greyed out.
featFeedback form now asks whether you're sending a Feature request or a Bug report - speeds up triage on our side.
featPrivacy link added to the footer alongside About / API / MCP / Changelog.
fixLive AIS feed (the 6 h Trends view and "live" buoy updates on Now) is back after a six-day silent outage following last week's reliability cleanup.

v2.8

v2.8.0 2026-04-24 gust first on trends

featTrends chart now defaults to Gust instead of Wind - matches what sailors actually check first. 72-hour window stays the default.

v2.7

v2.7.1 2026-04-24 anon key hotfix

fixMini App was showing "--" for all fields - the hardcoded public API key hadn't been rotated in the frontend. Fixed.

v2.7.0 2026-04-24 reliability cleanup

opsDatabase now backs up automatically every day. No change to URLs or responses.
opsReduced the number of moving parts behind the scenes - fewer paths an outage can take.
secRotated the public API key format. 3rd-party integrators: grab the new key shown in the developer docs.

v2.6

v2.6.5 2026-04-25 filter pills + prod rollout

featChangelog page now has clickable filter pills (Feat / Fix / Perf / Sec / Ops). Filter state persists in the URL so /changelog#fix is a shareable link.
featChangelog link now in the dashboard footer and the guide page footer, not just beta.
fixTag-to-description spacing on this page - no more "FEATFirst-visit" crowding.

v2.6.4 2026-04-25 changelog page

featThis changelog page - a retroactive walk through every notable release back to v1.0.

v2.6.3 2026-04-24

opsRetired the beta-only gust-at-90° experiment so beta and prod stay near-identical - fewer regressions when porting.

v2.6.2 2026-04-25 map lightbox

featTap the Dun Laoghaire or Dublin Bay circle on the Now tab to open a near-fullscreen satellite view with wind & gust particles still flowing.
perfSatellite tiles now load in ~0.3 s instead of 2–3 s, and subsequent opens are instant.

v2.6.1 2026-04-24 gust direction fix

fixGust arrows on the marina map were briefly drawn at a 90° offset on prod - reverted to the real gust bearing.

v2.6.0 2026-04-24 live view, chart revamp, web feedback

featNew 6h range on the Trends tab - live 3-minute pulse straight from the buoy.
featCharts revamped: amber forecast line distinct from the blue observed line, forecast horizon scales with the view (6h view → 6h ahead, longer views capped at 72h), rolling-average smoothing on 30d (24h window) and 365d (7d), default range bumped to 3d.
featWebsite visitors can now send feedback - no Telegram account required.
featAccessibility: text-size stepper (A− / A+) replaces the three-preset picker. Scales every element on the page. Default 160%.
secFeedback messages HMAC-verified (when from Telegram), sanitized server-side, and rate-limited per user (5/hour, 20/day). Runs on a dedicated serverless function.
fixDrift preview no longer leaks into every tab on the beta site.

v2.5 - MCP & observability

v2.5.1 2026-04-23

opsWeb Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) captured on every page load.

v2.5.0 2026-04-23 public MCP server

featCurated public MCP server at mcp.dublinbaybuoy.com - AI-friendly tools (get_current_conditions, get_wind_rose, get_forecast_skill, and more) instead of raw SQL. See /developers#mcp.

v2.4 - developer docs & hardening

v2.4.1 2026-04-23

secHardened scraper config and capped the alerts query to prevent runaway selects.

v2.4.0 2026-04-23 developer API

featPublic developer docs at /developers - REST API, anon key, quickstart in curl / Python / JS.
featNew rpc_forecast_skill - answers "how accurate is ECMWF's wind forecast 24h out? 72h out? a week?".
secBaseline security headers across all subdomains (HSTS, nosniff, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy). Strict CSP on the beta site. API key rotation runbook documented.

v2.3 - website-first pivot

v2.3.3 2026-04-23

featFirst-visit welcome banner linking to the quick guide.
featHelp (?) button in the header for fast access to the guide.

v2.3.2 2026-04-23

featWebsite-first pivot - new /guide page is the public front door; Telegram channel posts now link to the website.

v2.3.1 2026-04-23

opsInternal runbook refresh.

v2.3.0 2026-04-23 new domain

featMigrated from *.444b.me to dublinbaybuoy.com - friendlier URL, shareable branding.

v2.2 - wind/gust overlay

v2.2.1 2026-04-23

featSmall wind / gust legend under the wind-direction maps.

v2.2.0 2026-04-23

featGust overlay promoted to production - an orange particle stream layered over the blue wind stream so gusts read as a secondary flow.

v2.1 - observability

v2.1.1 2026-04-23

fixWind particles now traverse the full map disk at any wind speed (previously stalled at low speeds).

v2.1.0 2026-04-23 metrics + outbox

opsRED metrics on every HTTP client (bot, scraper, database) - now fed into a proper observability pipeline.
perfScraper outbox buffers writes during brief database outages so no readings are lost.

v2.0 - architecture split

v2.0.1 2026-04-23

fixSignalK WebSocket heartbeat + receive timeout - detects silent stalls and reconnects within seconds instead of hanging indefinitely.

v2.0.0 2026-04-17 monolith split

featMajor rework: the monolithic bot split into a scraper service, a bot service, and a managed database backend. Each can be restarted or rescaled independently - more reliable, easier to reason about.

v1.x - live data & iteration

v1.7.02026-04-17

fixComprehensive bugfix & cleanup pass across the whole app.

v1.6.0 2026-04-17

featLive AIS indicator with a pulsing dot on the dashboard - you can see at a glance when the live feed is flowing.

v1.5.0 2026-04-17

featAIS is now the primary data source when available - fresher readings than the hourly MetOcean feed. Falls back to MetOcean if SignalK goes quiet.

v1.4.02026-04-17

featSignalK AIS poller integrated behind the scenes.

v1.3.12026-04-16

fixTemperature forecast now uses sea-surface temperature instead of air temp.

v1.3.0 2026-04-16

featTidal-streams visualisation on the Tides tab (beta only) - see how tide currents flow across Dublin Bay.

v1.2.42026-04-14

opsDependency bumps: python-telegram-bot 21 → 22, aiohttp 3.11 → 3.13.

v1.2.32026-04-14

fixFive small correctness and robustness fixes bundled together.

v1.2.22026-04-14

opsPrivacy page is now served directly by the website.

v1.2.12026-04-14

perfPerformance instrumentation no longer fires before the page finishes loading.

v1.2 2026-04-14

opsRicher analytics instrumentation - tab dwell, feature usage, launch context (platform, colour scheme).

v1.1 2026-04-14 forecast drift

featForecast-drift logging - snapshot every 30 min so we can see how successive model runs change the prediction over time.
featDrift preview view on the beta site.

v1.0 2026-04-13 initial public release

featMini App with Now / Trends / Tides / Stats tabs.
featGale F8 reference line + Beaufort axis on wind charts.
featTide heights expressed above LAT (chart datum), matching UK & Irish tide tables.
featFeedback form with abuse rate-limiting.
featAccessibility: theme and text-size settings.
featChart cursor rule with snap-to-point hover for readable values.

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