Tacticians & navigators
The vocabulary is the one already raced with — targets from the ORC VPP, VMC on both boards, laylines in distance and time, bias in degrees and metres. Nothing renamed, nothing simplified away.
A racing-tactics app · built by sailors · in development
Every instrument on the boat,
in one clear view.
Sailfast draws a boat’s instruments together into one app and reads the race off them — line bias at the start, the favoured tack up the beat, target speed for the wind it’s seeing. Computed onboard, with GPS to fall back on when there’s no instrument feed.
Reads every instrumentGPS fallbackORC targetsInshore & offshore
Time to start1:24
Time to burn+8s
Line bias7°pin favoured
TWA41°TWS 11.2 kn
VMG5.0kntgt 5.3
Fav tackSTBD
The app's real race metrics · values illustrative
Where it comes from
Sailfast began as the app its makers wanted on their own boats — a way to bring the instruments together and keep a clear read on the racecourse, without a dedicated navigator aboard. It handles the arithmetic; the calls stay with the crew.
Built by sailors who write software · refined where it counts, on the water
Who it's for
Built for the whole fleet.
The same numbers serve a professional afterguard, a twilight crew, and a sailor in a first season of racing — read at whatever depth the race demands.
Club racers
The calls that are hardest to make mid-fleet with a hand on the helm — which end is favoured, when the time to burn runs out, how far to the layline — computed continuously, on a phone already aboard.
New to racing
Phone GPS alone is enough to begin — the start timer, distance to the line, time to burn and course navigation all work before any instrument network, and every call comes with its reasoning.
01Start & beat
From the gun to the top mark.
Once the timer is running, Sailfast works the line — time and distance to it, time to burn, which end is favoured and by how much, and an OCS flag the moment a boat is over. Up the beat it follows the favoured tack, distance and time to each layline, VMC on both boards, and which end of the gate pays.
Prestart
Time to start0:42
Time to burn+5s
Dist to line112m
Line bias5°pin favoured
Fav endPIN+14 m
OCSCLEAR
Upwind leg
Fav tackSTBD
Layline stbd0.21nm2:48
Layline port0.34nm4:31
VMC5.9kn
Fav gate endLEFT+0.4 len
Next mark312°0.8 nm
The guidance is advisory — it shows the call and the reasoning, and leaves the decision to the crew.
02Targets & performance
Is the boat sailing to its polars?
Sailfast shows target boat speed, VMG and angle for the wind right now, set beside the boat’s actual numbers — so any gap to target is plain to read. An ORC rating pulls a boat’s polars straight from the database; a one-design or unrated boat loads its own from a CSV.
ORC VPP importPolar interpolationSea-state correction
From the published ORC VPP, or a measured CSV.
BSP6.2kntgt 6.4
Perf97%
VMG4.7kntgt 4.8
Tgt TWA42°now 41°
03Dashboards & data
Every instrument, its own page.
Wind, Water, Nav, Targets and a raw instrument monitor — five pages, each built to read at a glance. They take the boat’s instrument network live — wind, depth, heading, speed and current — and fall back to phone GPS when there’s no feed.
TWS11.6kn
TWD214°
TWA41°
HDG173°
SOG6.3kn
COG168°
Depth8.4m
Set092°drift 0.6
Live from the instrument network or GPS · values illustrative
Metric or imperialCustom labels & unitsNight-red & night-orangeLive instrument monitor
04Courses & navigation
Courses built ashore, sailed onboard.
Windward-leeward, triangle, trapezoid, or a passage of waypoints — a course is built ashore, dropped on the map and activated in a tap. From there the chart carries the track, mark zones, laylines and wind ladders, with GoTo guidance to any mark or line.
Course types
The shapes fleets actually race — windward-leeward with configurable laps, triangles, trapezoids, and waypoint passages for distance racing.
Windward-leewardTriangleTrapezoidPassageGoTo
Set up ashore, it’s ready the moment the warning signal sounds.
Mark zonesLaylines Track Wind ladders
North-up · COG-up · GoTo-up
05The portal
A club’s marks and courses, checked before they reach the boat.
Club marks, venue courses and sailing instructions are too easy to get wrong in a spreadsheet on race morning. The Sailfast portal is where that data is gathered, checked against the real navigation marks, and published into a clean library the app loads — so the course a committee sets turns up correctly on every phone in the fleet.
From candidate to published
Each mark, line and course is captured, reconciled against the real navigation marks, then promoted into the versioned library the app loads — checked before it reaches the boat.
Marks & linesVenue coursesCandidate → promote
Checked, not hand-keyed
- Positions against charted nav aids
- Course geometry & line definitions
- A versioned library the app loads
The portal is in active development, starting with real venue data.
06Hughie
A voice in the cockpit, reading the breeze.
Hughie is the ecosystem’s next major capability — an AI tactical companion built for the cockpit, where eyes stay up and hands stay on the boat. Voice-first by design, it is being built to answer from the same race data the app reads, and from venue knowledge gathered and checked source by source.
“Send her down, Hughie” — old Australian slang for the wind. The name fits the job.
Local knowledge
Venue-by-venue tactical knowledge, built from checked sources — with every claim carrying where it came from and how much weight it deserves.
Rules on call
The racing rules, national prescriptions and an event’s sailing instructions, layered into one place a crew can question mid-race — hands-free.
Grounded, not glib
Answers draw on real data calls and named sources. Where the data runs out, Hughie says so — an honest “don’t know” over a confident guess.
In active build: the conversation core runs green under test today; grounded weather answers come next, voice follows.
07Roadmap
What comes next.
Each of these is already underway — a direction of travel, not a timetable.
Tactical overlays on the chart
The layline, favoured-side and tack-advantage maths the app already computes, drawn on the map.
Marine charts
Depth contours, hazards, channels and nav aids in place of a general-purpose map.
Weather & tide
Forecast overlays and live readings feeding pre-race planning and on-water decisions.
More venues & clubs
A growing library of marks and courses as the data pipeline brings in new venues.
Dashboard trends
Inline trend graphics for wind and performance, not just instantaneous numbers.
Club schedules & results
Automated schedules, sailing instructions and results, with notifications when they change.
A fuller race simulator
Deterministic scenario practice — pause, rewind, replay — grown into a complete rehearsal tool.
Availability
Being built, and sailed, through 2026.
Sailfast is being built and proven on the water. There’s nothing to sign up for yet — but an address left here will bring word once sea-trials open.
One note when sea-trials open