Free Online Sailing Simulator

[Sophie Reynolds]

Inits current form, Sailaway hits the rocky shoals when attempting to provide realism to a PC audience: complexity in a vehicle typically requires complex controls. Racing sims, flying sims, military sims: they all require complex and often expensive peripherals to allow the player to interact with the complexity of the machine. Flight simmers need HOTAS systems and rudder pedals, racing sims only come alive with a good force feedback wheel and an equally good set of pedals, and military sims require decent voice comms with squadmates. Sailaway has none of that. At this point in time, Sailaway is very hard to manage alone. Note that large and/or powerful sailing vessels actually are extremely hard to manage alone, so this is not a surprise, but it is again something to be aware of.

All is not lost, though. There is still active development going on, so some of what I consider to be gaps or faults may yet show up in a future update, but for now Sailaway seems to be at least partially lost at sea. Some of the fundamentals are in place and working well, but control is difficult and 6,000-mile cruises are visually boring for 5,998 of those miles. Sailaway will appeal to a select audience, but casual sailors will want to look elsewhere.

It its current form, Sailaway is an adequate way to learn about complex sailing vessels, travel the world by sea, and race online with other skippers. It is fairly straightforward to learn, but the limitations of controlling a complex boat with a keyboard and mouse are very evident. Sailaway is not for the casual player.

I've been fascinated with video games and computers for as long as I can remember. It was always a treat to get dragged to the mall with my parents because I'd get to play for a few minutes on the Atari 2600. I partially blame Asteroids, the crack cocaine of arcade games, for my low GPA in college which eventually led me to temporarily ditch academics and join the USAF to "see the world." The rest of the blame goes to my passion for all things aviation, and the opportunity to work on work on the truly awesome SR-71 Blackbird sealed the deal.

My first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1 that I bought in 1977 when they first came out. At that time you had to order them through a Radio Shack store - Tandy didn't think they'd sell enough to justify stocking them in the retail stores. My favorite game then was the SubLogic Flight Simulator, which was the great Grandaddy of the Microsoft flight sims.

While I was in the military, I bought a Commodore 64. From there I moved on up through the PC line, always buying just enough machine to support the latest version of the flight sims. I never really paid much attention to consoles until the Dreamcast came out. I now have an Xbox for my console games, and a 1ghz Celeron with a GeForce4 for graphics. Being married and having a very expensive toy (my airplane) means I don't get to spend a lot of money on the lastest/greatest PC and console hardware.

My interests these days are primarily auto racing and flying sims on the PC. I'm too old and slow to do well at the FPS twitchers or fighting games, but I do enjoy online Rainbow 6 or the like now and then, although I had to give up Americas Army due to my complete inability to discern friend from foe. I have the Xbox mostly to play games with my daughter and for the sports games.

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Feel like going sailing but don't want to drive to the marina? Kick back in your La-Z-Boy, fire up your computer, and start tacking. A new sailing simulator called Sailaway lets you command a 38-foot cruiser, a 45-foot wooden yacht, or if you're feeling feisty, a Mini-Transat racer.

Featuring accurately modeled waves and water color based on your location (waves and wave behavior differs from ocean to ocean), and day and night skies, Sailaway is the most advanced sailing simulator on the market.

The lifelike settings let you sail across the Pacific if you want, through real (virtual) waves and spray, subtly trimming in whatever wind speed you chose. The sails will dutifully luff if you're not paying attention, and there's a whole range of sailing instruments to keep your attention. The program allows you to virtually sail and even race with other armchair sailors around the world.

OrbCreation has re-created the oceans of the planet with unparalleled accuracy with a detailed world map. In Sailaway, making a trip across the Pacific takes months, just as it would on a real boat. With a persistent online world, adjust your settings and your boat will continue to sail even if you aren't online.

"Sailaway started as an experiment to see if it would be feasible to create a sailboat that responds to sail trim changes," says Richard Knol, the one-man development force behind Sailaway, "but it soon transformed into a full-time passion project, in which every aspect of sailing was being implemented in the most comprehensive way possible."

Published by new independent games publisher, The Irregular Corporation and developed by OrbCreation, the ultimate sailing simulator is compatible for PC and Mac for $39.99. You'll need a stout computer for the processor-hungry graphics, but you won't have to fight traffic or clean up the boat afterward.

Charles Fort is BoatUS Magazine's West Coast Editor. He often writes local news items for BoatUS Magazine's Waypoints column and contributes to Reports, in-depth tech features in every issue written to help readers avoid accidental damage to their boats. He is a member of the National Association of Marine Surveyors, he's on ABYC tech committees, and has a 100-ton U.S. Coast Guard license. He lives in California.

Sailonline's mission is to offer a superior internet-based sailing and navigation simulation to the global sailing community, whilst ensuring a future of growth and continuous enhancement to benefit its users through financial viability and long term vision.

Now login with our guest account to view currently running races:Username: guest - Password: guestPLEASE ONLY REGISTER YOUR OWN USERNAME AND PASSWORD IF YOU INTEND TO RACE.All times on Sailonline are in UTC

Virtual Regatta Inshore is the best dinghy racing simulator currently available. With the demise of SailX, Virtual Regatta seems to have gone from strength to strength and, with real-life sailing temporarily suspended during the Covid-19 lockdowns, it gained lots of new users looking for their sailing fix.

The American Challenge: A Sailing Simulation is a sailing simulation and racing game developed by Tom Snyder Productions and published by Mindscape in 1986. It allows two players to race online via modem.[1]

The game, portrayed through wireframe 3D graphics, sees the player race against the computer or another player via modem on eight courses. The player controls the sail, rudder and centerboard, while the screen equipment monitor the wind speed and direction.[1] The boat responds realistically to the player's movements.[2] The game is fashioned after the America's Cup. Players were able to verse players at other computer via a direct serial connection, and could verse themselves to beat their own time.[3] Players can take the American Challenge by trying to beat the Australian team.[4]

The game came packaged with a music record featuring a sailing tutorial on one side and an original song entitled Win Back the Cup on the other;[3] The New York Times recommended players learn the ropes using the audio tutorial rather than the "poorly organised manual".[6]

In a review appearing when the game was first released, The New York Times commented on the unique gameplay for the time, whereby two players could compete via modem.[1] In 2017, PC Magazine noted the game's "incredible depth for a game with very primitive wire frame 3D graphics".[7] US Computer magazine Family Computing called American Challenge a first rate program.[8] Tilt also gave high praise to the game's animation.[9] Kiplinger's Personal Finance strongly recommended the title to lovers of sailing and games, describing it as the perfect intersection of the two.[10] The Pantagraph and The Morning News felt games such as this title or Electronic Arts' The Official America's Cup Sailing Simulation offered a way for people who wanted to experience the America's Cup in a more meaningful way than through TV coverage.[11][12] The Chicago Tribune deemed it a "a patriotic exhortation to bring home the cup" rather than a game.[5]

The New York Times felt the series aimed to "close the gap between the real and the vicarious with simulations of the sports experience".[3] Washington Apple Pi Journal felt the game was "well documented" and deemed the graphics similar to Flight Simulator II.[13] Compute! noted that the game was challenging and left only a small room for error for the player to be victorious.[14]

Russell Sipe reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "For sailor/gamers this program is an absolute must. Non-sailor/gamers will also find it to be a good value and may learn some valuable "ground school" sailing techniques."[15]

Sailing seems like the only real way to get away from it all. Unlike hiking in the woods, where there are bugs and bears (and possibly bugbears, if you're in a fantasy forest), taking a ship out on the open ocean seems like your best option for solitude and silence. As long as you don't fall off the boat and get hassled by a bunch of fish, you can spend days, weeks, or months at sea without having to interact with another living creature, human or otherwise. In a world of smart phones and social media, it sounds utterly blissful.

In theory, anyway. In practice, I lasted about six minutes in open-world multiplayer sailing simulator Sailaway before I suddenly became desperate to talk to another player. Which is weird for me: I don't play many multiplayer games, and when I do I sort of hate talking to people anyway. And for the first few minutes of Sailaway I was perfectly content to see other ships but not try to communicate with their captains. That is, until I got the feeling other captains were actively trying to avoid me, at which point I became obsessed with getting their attention.

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