Sail With Dan

iOS · English and Italian

The wind on your phone. No wires up the mast.

Wind angle, wind speed, VMG, and the beat to the mark.

Dead masthead unit, or never had one? Your phone already has GPS, a compass, and a forecast. That is enough to sail by the numbers.

Start the 7-day trialSee how it works

7-day trial on the yearly plan, then $39.99 a year. Weekly and monthly too.

Chart helm off Marina di Ragusa: live SOG, COG, and TWA columns, heading-up wind dial, SOS above Anchor, sailboat marker with heading ray, Chart / Wind / Compass / Data.

Instruments

A proper wind dial, driven by GPS and forecast.

The needle shows the angle, the digits show the speed, and the close-hauled arcs follow your polar. Chart, Wind, Compass, and Data sit one tap apart.

Wind Lock
Forecast wrong and the telltales right? Drag the needle to match them. The beat follows.
APP / TRUE
One tap on the face swaps apparent for true.
Drift
Heading against course: one angle for wind and current together.
Full-screen analog wind instrument: APP and TRUE on the face, needle at AWA, AWS digits, red port and green starboard close-hauled arcs.

Beat

Mark dead upwind? It lays out the tacks.

It fits a zigzag to the forecast wind and your polar, names the tack you are on, and counts down to the next turn.

Your polar
It ships with numbers for a 35-footer. Edit the angles in Settings.
Your angle
Nudge the plan higher or deeper with minus and plus.
Under engine
Switch to engine and the zigzag becomes a rhumb line.
Beat planned to WP-2: BEATING UPWIND, Sail selected, passage rail from My position, Start sailing.

Ruler

Line up the crosshair, then add a point.

The ruler lives on the Chart. One tap per vertex, and the bar shows total miles and the last-leg bearing.

Up to twenty points
With undo and clear. It vanishes when you leave the mode.
Chart stays chart
While you measure, taps stop identifying seamarks.
Same math
Each leg is a rhumb line, like the rest of the app.
Chart ruler: cyan crosshair path of several points, TOTAL miles and last-leg bearing, ADD POINT.

Forecast

Five wind models, and the age of every number.

ECMWF, ICON, ARPEGE, GFS, and regional models side by side. Pressure, rain, and waves on the same sheet.

Departure window
It says when to go, and when waiting pays off.
Heads-ups
A ping at 25 knots, at 1.25 m of sea, or when pressure drops fast.
Sea state
Significant height, period, and swell on the same sheet.
Open-Meteo sheet: WIND AT VESSEL 11 kn from WNW, PRESSURE 1012 hPa rising, rain next 6 h, SEA 0.4 m, next 48 hours.

Man overboard

One tap marks the water and steers you back.

SOS drops a mark on the last GPS fix and starts a course straight back to it. Nothing to choose, nothing to confirm.

No dialogs
The leg starts on the tap. Undo stays on screen for eight seconds.
Loud
The alert cuts through a silenced ringer.
Every tap counts
Each press is a new mark: the second never erases the first.
MOB under way: red person pin MOB 21:39, engine rhumb 0.30 NM, SOS button filled red, Undo on the snackbar.

Night vision

After dark the helm goes red on black.

One tap on the moon chip and the whole helm turns dark red: panels, chart, wind dial, and compass rose.

One tap
The chip on the helm bar, or the switch in Settings.
COLREG stays
Port stays red and starboard stays green.
Chart too
The tiles darken along with the rest of the helm.
Chart helm in night vision: red-on-black map of Marina di Ragusa, moon chip on, Chart / Wind / Compass, SOS and instruments still readable.

Anchor watch

Drop the hook, set the radius, turn in.

If the boat leaves the circle, the phone sounds through a silenced ringer. Distance, drift, and the circle stay on the chart.

Survives a crash
If the app dies with the watch armed, it comes back armed.
Honest about GPS
If accuracy is coarse for your radius, it says so.
Shallow backstop
Arm a depth alarm alongside it, and sleep better.
Full-screen ANCHOR DRAGGING alarm: 554 m from the mark, 80 m swing radius, Silence 10 min or End watch.

Coastal limits

A bar when you cross 3, 6, or 12 NM.

Cross a limit and a bar appears, with a single buzz. Dismiss it, and it stays quiet until you change zone.

Tap the bar
A dashed line points to the nearest shore.
Discreet
One buzz and that's it. Turn it off in Settings.
Red bar 12 NM from coast, 12.3 NM, dashed line toward shore, Chart / Wind / Compass.

Log

The passage records itself, then exports.

A trail follows the boat and becomes a named track: distance, speed, wind, time on each tack. Days roll up into a logbook.

GPX and KML
Export for OpenCPN, Garmin, or Google Earth.
Wind on every point
Each point keeps the wind and your angle at that moment.
Learned polar
It can propose a polar from what you actually sailed.
Tracks list: saved recordings with duration, distance in nautical miles, point count, and GPX or KML export.

Catch log

Mark the fish. Keep the conditions with the pin.

The helm hook drops a catch at the last GPS fix. Add species, size, and a note; the app freezes the rest.

Frozen at the drop
SOG, wind, wave, and depth from the moment you marked it.
Share the log
One catch or the whole log, as GPX or KML.
Own layer
Cyan pins, kept apart from waypoints.
Catch sheet: Sea bass chip selected, Kept, frozen TWS 13 kn SE, Hs 0.2 m, SOG 0.0 kn, Save.

VHF handbook

Channel 16, even with no signal.

The marine VHF channel list lives in Settings, offline. Search by channel or by use.

Offline
It is there even when the signal is not.
INT and US
Flip the plan to match the waters you are in.
Distress marked
The distress channels stay highlighted throughout.
VHF channels handbook: INT/US chips, search, distress channels highlighted, offline.

Depth

The depth under the boat, always on screen.

EMODnet bathymetry across European waters, with contours from 2 to 200 meters. Tap anywhere for a reading, or watch the chip under the boat.

Helm chip
The depth where you are, at a glance.
Depth alarm
Arm it over the shallows, alongside the anchor watch.
On tap
A reading anywhere on the chart.
Nautical chart with dashed EMODnet depth contours labeled 5, 10, 20, 30, and 50 meters.

Data

Lay out the instruments you actually steer by.

A fourth page next to Compass: three saved layouts, grids of one to six cells, and any reading in any cell.

Wet-hand safe
A tap does nothing. Only a long press opens edit.
Three layouts
Passage, Sailing, and Instruments. Rename them if you like.
Graphics
A wind face, heading tape, or XTE corridor can fill a cell.
Data helm page, Passage layout: SOG, COG, DTW, and ETE in a four-cell grid, Chart / Wind / Compass / Data.

Who it's for

For boats without instruments.

The charter week with a dead masthead unit. The classic nobody wants to drill. The daysailer that was never wired. Your phone already has everything: it goes on the binnacle, and the boat stays as she is.

On the water

Three boats this was built for.

Charter week

The masthead unit is dead

You take the boat over on Saturday and the wind display reads nothing. The phone goes on the binnacle, and you sail.

Classic

Nobody is drilling the teak

Three years of restoration: no cable up the mast for a plastic display. The numbers arrive on the phone.

Daysailer

A wind pack costs more than the sails

Match the app to your telltales with Wind Lock and let it lay out the tacks.

Pricing

$39.99 a year, or $1.99 for the week you need it.

Same app in every plan. Yearly opens with a seven-day trial and costs the least. Weekly is for the charter week.

Weekly

Charter week

$1.99/week

The full app for a week. Cancel when you fly home.

Get a week

Monthly

$4.99/month

A month at a time, while you make up your mind.

Get a month

Yearly

7-day trial

$39.99/year

Saves $20 a year against monthly

A whole season, and the only plan with a trial.

Start the 7-day trial

Prices in US dollars. Every plan renews until you cancel. Everything runs through the App Store.

Safety

An aid to navigation, not a primary means of navigation.

Sail With Dan does not replace official charts, an echo sounder, a lookout, or your judgment.

  • This is not ENC or ECDIS data. Only official charts and Notices to Mariners carry everything needed for safe navigation.
  • Chart, weather, wave, and depth data come from third parties — MapTiler, OpenStreetMap, OpenSeaMap, Open-Meteo, EMODnet — none surveyed for navigation.
  • Depth is modeled from roughly 115 m cells and is never used to plan a route. The contours are drawn dashed to say so.
  • Position and alarms depend on phone GPS and iOS. Plug in on long watches and test your alarms at the dock.
  • Routes and forecasts are planning aids. You vet every board, and you keep the watch.

Data

Where the numbers come from.

Nothing is invented: named open sources, with the age of every number on screen.

MapTiler Cloud
Outdoor, Ocean, or Satellite raster under the seamarks, cached on the device.
OpenStreetMap and OpenSeaMap
Coastline, harbors, and seamarks, maintained by the community.
Open-Meteo
Wind, pressure, rain, and sea state from ECMWF, ICON, ARPEGE, GFS, and regional models.
EMODnet Bathymetry
Modeled depth contours for European waters.
Your phone
The device GPS and compass. Nothing to buy.

The next sail, with numbers.

Yearly opens with a seven-day trial; weekly and monthly start right away. There is nothing to install on the boat.

Download on the App Store