The short version
- What it is
- A sailboat racing app that runs on the Apple Watch and the iPhone: a start timer with audio cues, start-line tools, live race pages, and a recording of every race for the debrief afterwards.
- What's free
- The countdown with spoken or beeped cues, compass, speed, heading, the no-sail zone, Black Box, the tacking drill, and the full debrief on your first five sessions.
- What Pro adds
- Line bias and the favored end, distance and time to the line, time to burn, VMG with tack and gybe calls, wind-shift tracking, your whole history, every drill, and sharing and comparing races. $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year, first month free.
- What you need
- An Apple Watch with watchOS 10.6 or later and an iPhone with iOS 17.6 or later. The watch app installs with the iPhone app.
Sail Tactician treats the watch as the main screen on the water: big numbers, color only where it means something, and controls you can hit with a wet hand. The iPhone is where the debrief lives afterwards.
Before the start
The watch opens on the race timer. Race Setup, one tap away, gathers what you change most often as tiles:
- Wind. Point the watch into the wind and tap to lock the heading. It records a true bearing once the watch has a GPS fix.
- Type. Race, Training or Cruise.
- Pin and Boat. Sail past each end of the start line and tap. Each tile reads Captured, and tapping a captured end again drops it, so a mis-tap costs one tap rather than a sail back to the mark.
- Boat class. More than 50 presets, each with the upwind and downwind angles that drive the no-sail zone and VMG. See boat profiles.
The line stays set until you clear it. The setup guide takes you from download to first countdown in five steps.
The countdown
Set the minutes with −/+ and tap Start. Recording begins with the countdown, so the pre-start is in your track. Three large keys sit under the clock: cancel, sync to the nearest minute, and pause. Cues come as spoken numbers or beeps, with a long beep at the gun. The start timer page has the detail.
With Pro and a line captured, the screen adds DTL (distance to the line, in your own units), Burn (seconds in hand at your current approach) and the favored end in degrees. See start line bias.
During the race
At the gun the timer goes away and your race pages take over. You choose what's on them in Settings → Metrics Display: speed, average and max, COG, distance, heart rate, tack and gybe counts, and with Pro the Tactical and VMG rows. Tactical shows your course, the target heading for your boat class, the correction to get there, and a TACK or GYBE cue. The VMG page explains what those numbers mean and when TACK appears.
If the line is captured and the watch thinks you were on the course side at the gun, it says so: a full-screen Possible OCS warning tells you to check the committee boat for the X flag. With Pro, add the Start Line metric to a page and distance to the line stays live after the gun, reading red OCS while you're over.
Built for a wet wrist
- Water Lock can switch on when you press Start, or at the gun, so the screen stays live through the countdown for a sync and then locks.
- The Action button, on watches that have one, follows the race: a press starts the countdown, the next syncs it, and during the race a press opens the End screen and asks. A press never ends a race by itself, so a sleeve can't end a recording.
- Battery. GPS stays at full accuracy from the countdown to the finish. The compass eases off when your wrist is down, and the summary shows what the race cost.
- Black Box, free, shows only the countdown and then the elapsed time, while still recording everything. What your class allows on screen is for its rules to say.
With or without the iPhone
The watch records a race on its own, with heart rate from its own sensor. Leave the phone in your bag or on the dock.
Mount an iPhone and turn on Phone Mounted, and the watch becomes its remote. Start, sync, pause and end on your wrist all drive the phone, and both count to the same gun. The phone records the one session, with your heart rate streamed from the watch.
After the race
The watch shows a summary when you end: time, distance, speeds, tacks and gybes, battery used, and analysis cards, with the wind-dependent ones appearing when a wind was set. The session then transfers to the iPhone by itself, and an interrupted transfer retries. On the phone you get the full debrief: a speed-colored map, the start, charts, and the Coach, which shows how many seconds each finding cost you. More in what Sail Tactician does differently.
Free and Pro
Every session is recorded and saved in full on every tier. Free covers the timer, the live instruments, Black Box, the tacking drill, and the full debrief on your first five sessions; after that, new ones stay locked until you subscribe, and nothing is deleted.
Pro adds the tactical tools listed above, plus wind-shift tracking (the watch taps you when a shift of 8° or more settles in). Subscribe on the iPhone and the watch unlocks from it. See pricing.
What it doesn't do
- It isn't a high-rate instrument. A watch GPS updates about once a second: good enough to know whether you're early or late at the line and by roughly how much, not to place your bow to the inch. See phone and watch vs dedicated instruments.
- No live feed from boat instruments. Wind comes from your own capture and the courses you sail.
- No marks captured during the race. You place the windward mark on the map afterwards, on the iPhone.
- Apple only. There's no app for other watches, though races from them can be imported for the debrief. Compare the options in the best sailing watches and Apple Watch vs Garmin quatix.
Questions
Is there a sailing app for Apple Watch?
Yes. Sail Tactician runs on Apple Watch and iPhone, with a start timer, start-line tools, live race pages and a recording of every race. The watch comes with no regatta timer of its own, so apps like this fill the gap.
Does the Apple Watch app work without my iPhone on the boat?
Yes. The watch records a race on its own and sends it to the iPhone afterwards for the full debrief. If you do mount an iPhone, the watch can drive it as a remote.
Is the Apple Watch sailing app free?
The countdown with audio cues, compass, speed, heading, no-sail zone, Black Box and the full debrief on your first five sessions are free. Pro, at $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year with the first month free, adds the start line, VMG, wind-shift tracking and your whole history.
Which Apple Watch do I need?
Any Apple Watch running watchOS 10.6 or later, paired with an iPhone running iOS 17.6 or later.
Sources
Everything here describes Sail Tactician 3.2 and is taken from the in-app User Guide (Settings → Support → User Guide), also available as the full user guide.
What changed
- First published.
Put a racing instrument on your wrist.
Start line, wind shifts and VMG at a glance, and a coach in your pocket afterwards. Free to download for Apple Watch and iPhone, with the full debrief on your first five races.
Download on the App Store