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Logbook & Analysis

Session List

All sessions, newest first: type icon, name (or date and time), duration, distance and max speed. The filter button (top-right, filled when active) opens the same Filters sheet as Analytics: type, boat (once you have sessions from more than one), and date range (This Week/Month/Quarter/Year, All Time, Last N sessions, or a Custom range). The Logbook defaults to All Time and keeps its own filters. Swipe a row or use its context menu to Rename or Delete it.

Recycle Bin

Deleted sessions go to the Recycle Bin for 30 days, then are removed automatically.

Deletes, restores and purges sync across your devices.

Import & Export

Export (iPhone). Open a session and choose ⋯ → Export, or in the Logbook's ⋯ menu choose Export All (the races currently shown — filter first) or Select to tick specific races, then Actions → Export as. Formats: STX (the lossless native format — use it for backups and moving races between your own devices), GPX (Strava, Garmin BaseCamp, ChartedSails), CSV (Numbers, Excel), KML (Google Earth), and TCX (Garmin). Exports respect trimming; STX also keeps the trim so it can be undone after re-import. Select mode also bulk-deletes to the Recycle Bin.

Import (iPhone, beta except STX). ⋯ → Import Sessions… in the Logbook, or tap a race file in Files or from AirDrop and choose Copy to Sail Tactician. Supported: STX, GPX, CSV, TCX, FIT (Garmin, COROS and most other sports watches), Vakaros VKX logs, and NMEA 0183 captures, and a .zip holding any of them. Duplicates are detected and skipped — importing the same FIT activity twice brings in one race. A file that doesn't name its race is titled after the file. Imports never count against the free allowance.

From a Garmin or COROS watch. Record the race on the watch as usual, then get its FIT file to your iPhone:

An imported activity is treated as the whole race — every number covers the full recording, and it takes the boat selected in Settings. It's filed as a race unless the file says otherwise. Open it and a Complete this session card lists what the file couldn't say: the type (change it to Training or Cruise if it wasn't a race), the boat, the wind and the windward mark. Tap a row to set it — the type and boat from a list, the wind and the mark on the session map, exactly as for a session recorded in the app. Placing the mark also gives the session a wind, worked out from the start to the mark. Choosing Use Estimate in the wind rose counts as setting the wind too — the row then reads Estimated with the bearing. The card goes once the boat and the mark are set, which laylines and beat coaching need. A cruise has no mark to place: its card asks for the boat and the wind, and goes once both are set.

Smart or Every Second? Both work. Garmin's default Smart recording writes a point only when your course or speed changes, so it can leave several seconds between points on a steady leg; Sail Tactician fills those gaps with straight lines to one point a second — what Garmin Connect draws too — so tacks, gybes and average speed come out the same. The session says so under its map: Recorded at about 0.2 Hz — filled to one point a second for analysis. Every Second (Garmin: Data Recording → Every Second) still times each maneuver most precisely. A watch doesn't record course over ground, so it's worked out from your track — and the watch's own speed is checked against your track too, because some watches record the occasional impossible spike, or a speed stream out of step with their positions. An activity recorded without GPS — GPS switched off, a non-GPS activity profile, or a workout with no route on its map — has no track and can't be imported.

Importing from other apps and devices is in beta — every format except STX, which is Sail Tactician's own. Those files often lack what the app records itself, whatever made them — a watch, a bike computer, a phone app or an instrument: some log no course, some record only every few seconds, some report the occasional impossible speed, and many GPX and CSV files carry no speed or reliable times. Sail Tactician fills in what it can from your track, but no real sailing race from most of these sources has been through it yet, so some numbers may be off. Every imported race carries a BETA note naming the file's format — and what made it, when the file says (a device such as quatix 7, a maker such as Garmin, or the app that exported it) — with a Report a problem button — or use Settings → Support → Send Feedback. Tell us the app or device the file came from and what looked wrong; it's how this gets out of beta. Moving your own races between your devices as STX isn't affected.

What carries over: GPS track, speed, course and heart rate from any format — and when a file has no speed or course (most watch and Strava exports), they're worked out from the track. Vakaros VKX logs also bring the gun, the race end, both start-line ends and the wind; NMEA logs bring the wind from MWD. CSV times can be ISO-8601, 2026-08-23 17:52:00 (read as UTC) or Unix epoch seconds. STX carries everything — heel/trim, wind, tack/gybe counts, start line, marks, workout results and coaching, trim edits. GPX exported by Sail Tactician also keeps the gun, start line marks, wind and heel/trim, so re-importing your own GPX preserves the pre-start/race split and the Start tab. Exports never contain your name; STX carries it only when you Share.

Sharing & Comparing

If another sailor in your fleet records with Sail Tactician, you can compare the two of you in the same race — who was ahead, where that changed, and why.

Reading it. The headline says who finished ahead over the shared window, in distance and seconds. Lead Over Time — above the line means you were ahead, measured as progress around the course so it reads correctly on every leg; drag to scrub and both boats move on the map. Where It Changed lists the stretches where the lead really moved, each with the best explanation — boat speed, a tack or gybe, pointing, or a different side of the course; tap one to jump there. Head to Head puts the metrics side by side, better figure in bold. Replay plays both boats together at up to 8×, with the skip buttons stepping between Key Moments or Tacks/Gybes.

The comparison runs from the start gun. One boat recording it is enough — if only yours has one it's used for both and the screen says so, which assumes you started together. Only when neither race has a gun does it fall back to where the tracks first overlap. Both tracks are resampled to 1 Hz so neither is flattered; a missing wind is estimated from both tracks and you can nudge it; and a warning appears if the boats averaged far apart, which usually means you weren't in the same race.

Session Detail

One scrolling screen: a Complete this session checklist while anything is missing, a summary card, a Map / Start / Speed / VMG control whose last tab is Heel or Events, and — once the session has a wind — the deeper analysis cards and Coach.

The ⋯ menu holds Rename, Replay, Trim or Clip, Boat, Session Type, Results & Notes, Wind Direction, Start Line, Export, Share and Compare. Changing the type moves the session between the Logbook and Analytics filters — it isn't gone, it moved. Assigning a boat makes it appear under the Boat filter. Deleting is done from the Logbook list.

Complete this session — at the top whenever the session is missing something its analysis is measured against: Type, Boat, Wind and, for a race or training, the Windward mark (a cruise doesn't ask for one). Each row shows what's set, with a tick, and opens its editor. Neither device captures the mark on the water, so most races ask for it once — place it on the map where you rounded. Placing it also gives the session a wind if it had none, and choosing Use Estimate for the wind counts too. The checklist goes once the boat and the mark are set (a cruise: the boat and the wind).

Summary card — the session type and boat with its sail number on the left; the start time with a watch or phone glyph and the pre-start and race durations on the right; then Duration, Distance, Avg Speed, Max Speed, Tacks, Gybes, Capsizes, heel when recorded, and your race result when entered.

The numbers describe your race, not your countdown. Recording starts with the timer, so a session holds both; everything on the card and in the analysis below covers the gun to the finish. A Race / Full session toggle switches scope. Sessions with no gun — third-party imports, cruises, a clip from before the gun — cover the whole recording.

Cruises — a session typed Cruise has no course and no result, so it drops what only a race needs: no Coach card or training suggestions, no Start Line or windward mark tools on the map or in the ⋯ menu, and Results & Notes becomes Notes (on the watch too). The sailing-performance cards — polar, VMG, port vs starboard, upwind vs downwind — stay. Nothing is deleted: change the type back to Race and any mark, start line or finishing place it had is still there.

Results & Notes — your finishing place and notes (conditions, what worked, "3 of 20"). On the watch the post-race Summary has a Results & Notes row; later, on either device, open the session and choose Results & Notes. It shows as an ordinal (3rd) with the notes beneath, and syncs via iCloud.

Tacks and gybes are counted from your course sailed, not the watch's orientation: a tack is crossing the wind upwind, a gybe crossing dead-downwind; mark roundings aren't counted. Without a set wind, the app estimates one from the track to tell them apart. Counts recompute after a trim or clip.

The map's control bar (top-right) holds windward mark, start line, wind, trim or clip, replay and expand, so everything you can do to a course is on the map. Full screen shows the same controls in a toolbar. An undo arrow appears the moment you move something and restores it to where it was when you opened that editor; once you tap Done the change is kept. Done returns you to the session if you started the edit from there, or leaves you on the map if you expanded it first.

Set the wind after the fact — tap the WIND badge on the map. A wind rose lies over your track: turn it until its axis lines up with the course you sailed, up the beat and back down the run, or tap the reading for a number pad. It's the direction the wind blew FROM. Use Estimate returns to the app's own guess. If you've set a windward mark the app uses that instead — the bearing from the start line to the mark is the wind, and far better than a guess from the track, which can come out backwards on a reaching race. The badge reads mark or est to say which. Setting a wind unlocks the VMG tab, Polar Diagram, Port vs Starboard and Upwind vs Downwind. 0° is a real bearing, due north.

Set the start line after the fact — Start Line from the ⋯ menu or the map bar. Pick Pin or Committee Boat, tap the water where it was, tap again to nudge, then place the other end. Placed marks are estimates by eye, and moving one updates the Start tab immediately.

Map — the track colored by speed (red slow, yellow moderate, green fast), start, finish and capsize markers, tack (blue) and gybe (purple) ticks, the start line (dashed yellow), and the pre-start drawn faded and dashed with a Gun flag. The legend toggles the Tack, Gybe, Good and Improve layers. Tacking cones aren't drawn here — they're on the Coach card, one beat at a time.

Start — the last two minutes and first thirty seconds, with a verdict and figures. The first group needs only the gun: speed at the gun (averaged over three seconds), best approach speed, time up to speed, distance in the last minute, approach turns, and gun speed as a percentage of race pace — the difference between parked on the line and arriving at pace. The second needs the start line and a wind you set yourself: distance back from (or over) the line at the gun, line length, which end you started at and which was favored. An estimated wind isn't used here, because which side counts as over depends on it. If the saved line is much further away at the gun than it is long, the app assumes it belongs to a different race and says so.

Speed — over time, with the race average (orange dashed) and the Gun (green dashed); the pre-start is shaded. VMG — over time from the gun, when a wind is set. Heel — for mounted-phone sessions, signed: above the line is one side, below the other, so you can see which tack you sat flatter on. It replaces Events, with any events listed underneath. Events — capsizes and knockdowns with time, duration, confidence and peak acceleration (mounted iPhone only); tap the trash icon on a false one to delete it.

Recorded COG. A GPS receiver stops updating its course when you're barely moving and keeps reporting the last one without saying so. The app cross-checks every fix against the path travelled and records the path when they disagree badly. Races from much older versions can still show the boat arrow stuck for a stretch of the pre-start.

Analysis cards (each has an ⓘ explaining the metric):

Coach

At the bottom of a race: a map, a strip of legs, and one finding at a time.

The number top-right is the bill — the seconds the two biggest findings cost, and roughly how far that is at your pace. Under it, chips: Start, every leg in order (Beat 1, Run 1, Beat 2…), then Race for findings that belong to no single leg. Orange means something to work on, green a clean leg, plain nothing to say. Tap a leg for its findings and swipe the card to move through them. The map frames whatever card you're on — a beat with its tacking cone, a maneuver zoomed in on the turn. Tap the map to open it full screen.

The cone is the region between the two laylines, from where the beat began to the mark. No route is drawn inside it: every two-board path through the cone is the same length, so where you tack is a tactical choice, not a distance one. Where an edge crosses water you've never sailed it turns solid gray — the app has no chart and won't draw a confident line across a shore. Where your track left the cone, that stretch is drawn in orange.

Each card carries the headline, its cost, Why (the explanation), Show on map, and the drill that trains it (Drill: …, in beta). On a maneuvers card, Next tack steps through the turns on that leg. A green check is something that went well — one or two per race, because coaching that only names faults tells you half of what to do next time. All findings opens the complete lists (Beats, Maneuvers, Start); tap any numbered maneuver to open the map on that turn, with an amber dashed ray showing the heading you should have settled on. Replay plays the race back with each maneuver's cue popping up as the boat reaches it.

How findings rank. Every finding is priced in time at your own speed — ~40s, or minutes and seconds from a minute up (~6:21) — and the two most expensive lead. Being over the line at the gun leads regardless. Anything under about ten seconds never leads, and there is one finding per beat and one per kind. A finding wears APPROX when it rests on a reconstructed wind or a mark placed by eye.

On the beats (needs the wind and the windward mark):

Maneuvers — every tack and gybe scored like a training rep: speed lost, time to rebuild, exit angle. Speed is measured from the moment your bow crossed the wind, and a turn is called a big speed loss when it cost noticeably more than your usual one that race — a quarter more, and at least ten points — so a gusty day or a heavy boat isn't held to a light-air number. Until there are four of a kind to compare, the bar is a fixed 60% for a tack and 45% for a gybe. A turn with nothing to fix says how it compared — your usual tack, or better than your usual when it lost five points less — rather than calling a 45% loss clean. A turn that never got back to speed within 30 seconds — a tack into a lull, say — is shown as not recovered rather than given a time. Start — over the line, late, parked well back, or slow at the gun; a clean start is said in one line.

If a tack reads inside 25° of the recorded wind — which no boat sails — the card says so first, in amber, with a tap to the wind rose. And when the beats can't be judged, the card says why rather than disappearing:

It saysWhat to do
The wind was never recordedSet the wind, or place the windward mark
No markPlace the mark on the map
No boat classSet your boat in Settings
Nothing stood outNothing — that's the good answer

Downwind legs are numbered but carry no findings yet. Beat findings are in beta: they depend on knowing where the wind was, and the card is built to stay quiet rather than guess.

Replay

⋯ → Replay (or ▶ on the map) plays the boat back along your track.

Trim & Clip

Forgot to end the race? ⋯ → Trim or Clip. The map fills the top of the screen; a two-handle slider marks the stretch you want, and the map and speed graph dim the rest live, with START, END and LENGTH readouts.

Trim if the recording is one race with junk on the ends; clip if it holds a race you want on its own. Doing both is fine. Stats, charts and the map recompute, and the change syncs.