Using SailMail from LuckGrib on macOS, with Airmail running inside a local virtual machine is pretty easy.

Before getting to this point, you should have read through the instructions on the main SailMail page.. Its important that the virtual machine and Airmail are properly configured.

The steps to configure LuckGrib, are:

• configure LuckGrib to send its email requests directly to Airmail in the virtual machine.
• send and receive mail using Airmail in the normal way.
• retrieve the weather data from the newly received email, using the LuckGrib POP3 interface.

These steps will be described in more detail.

Configure LuckGrib to use the SailMail SMTP / POP3 interface

Before proceeding, ensure that the Windows virtual machine is running, and that the Airmail program is also running. Airmail should be showing two windows, one for its main interface, and one for the POP3/SMTP server.

Now, open LuckGrib, and then open Application Preferences window and click on the Download preferences area. Now select the email method and click on the Settings button.

This is where you tell LuckGrib how to connect to Airmail. If you followed all of the suggestions in the previous configuration guides, you will configure the following:

• click on the SailMail option

Enter the following:

• account: luckgrib (or whatever Airmail POP user you used.)
• password: luckgrib (or whatever Airmail POP user password you used.)
• The default IP address of 127.0.0.1 is fine
• SMTP port: 6625
• POP3 port: 6610

Before proceeding, press the Verify Account button. This will test your settings with the Airmail application.

If the Verify Account process fails, there may be several reasons. Ensure that Airmail is running, that the POP and SMTP servers are active (there will be a window shown which indicates that the servers are waiting for connections), ensure that the virtual machine is setup to forward connections to local ports correctly, and that the Windows firewall is setup properly.

Using LuckGrib to send/receive email through SailMail

After setting up these settings, when you send email from LuckGrib to Airmail, the email request will show up directly in the Airmail Transit queue. Seeing this work the first time is very cool!

After creating the email request, use Airmail in the standard manner and have it send the email and then receive the reply.

When you receive a new email message containing weather data, press the import button:

After clicking that button, LuckGrib will use POP3 to open the Airmail mail spool, scan the messages it contains looking for weather data, test to see if that data has already been imported or not, and present you the list of files it has found:

Click on the Import GRIB file button to import the file and finish this process.

(You can import files from Airmail whenever you want. To do this, from the File menu, select the item: Import GRIB files from Airmail…)