SailTimer for iPhone - what a little winner!

3:49 AM Tue 3 Nov 2009 GMT

'SailTimer screen' .

An iPhone application has done it again!

Here's another iPhone app that may end up as your favourite - and it could certainly end up as mine.

Whether you are a racing sailor, a day cruiser or a circumnavigator, calculating when you will arrive at your next destination - a waypoint, a marker buoy or a distant island - is a vital piece of information.

This is pretty easy if you're running, but if you're tacking, it's more of a challenge. Iphone App SailTimer has the answer.

Unfortunately,the ETA function on standard GPS units was designed for powerboats, and does not deal with sailboat tacking very well. That is why it may go blank when you stay on a tack too long. It views that as cross-track 'error'.

Using VMG (velocity made good) to gauge your progress towards your waypoint while tacking upwind is also problematic. VMG decreases all by itself the longer you stay on a tack. It is like driving down the highway in a car at a constant speed, and have the speedometer deflate all the way down to 0, even though your speed hasn't changed. Not very useful. It could even be a safety hazard.

But with SailTimer for the iPhone/iPod, all sailors can now have a correct method to know when they will make
landfall - or be home for lunch.

However, it has one more benefit - it will also calculate for you what are the optimal sailing angles to get there.

SailTimer for iPhone - .. .

SailTimer already appears in several navigation/charting programs for Mac and PC including ones from MacENC.com and NavSim.com. There is also a free version for Google Maps (which requires an internet connection), and a small Windows desktop version (no maps).

The main questions SailTimer solves are (1) how long is it going to take to tack to my destination, and (2) what are the optimal sailing angles to get there?

You can plot waypoints on Google Maps and calculate times to go to them, can calculate the distances on each tack, and much more. SailTimer Lite is a free download from iTunes, and the full version is US $13.99 - which is about $15.27 Australian.

Just to think - I used to have to make a guess at the angles and add 40% for tacking - soon there'll be no guess work at all in sailing!

For more information, go to the SailTimer Website !

by Nancy Knudsen