Last updated: 28 September 2026
Helm has no user accounts and no servers of mine. I cannot see your sails, your position, your logbook or anything else about your use of the app. This policy explains what that means in practice, and the two places where it needs a caveat.
Everything that matters. Your recorded tracks, your session archive, your boat's polar, your race windows, the coach's findings and your settings are all stored on your iPhone and Apple Watch, and are computed there. None of it is sent to me.
Helm uses GPS to show live speed and course and to record a sail. Location access is required for the app's core purpose. Recording continues while your wrist is down or your phone is in a pocket, using the standard iOS background-location mode — the system's background-location indicator is deliberately left visible rather than suppressed.
Your position is used to draw your track, compute your statistics, and choose the nearest weather and tide stations. It is not transmitted to me, and there is no analytics or tracking of any kind in the app.
Health access is optional. If you grant it, Helm saves each sail to Apple Health as a workout with its route, so it appears in Apple Fitness, and reads back only the sailing workouts it created in order to summarise them. Health data is never transmitted off your device. Declining Health access does not affect recording.
If iCloud Backup is on (it is on by default, and can be switched off in Settings), your logbook is mirrored into your own private iCloud database. That storage belongs to your Apple Account. I have no access to it and no ability to read it. Turning the setting off stops future syncing; erasing your data in Settings deletes the iCloud copy too.
Helm Pro is bought through the App Store. Apple processes the payment; I never see your payment details, and the app checks what you own on your device through Apple's StoreKit. Redeeming a club or promotional code goes through the App Store the same way. No purchase information is sent to me.
Helm contacts public weather and tide services to show conditions. These are the only network calls it makes, other than Apple's own services.
There is no way to ask "what is the forecast here" or "what warnings are active here" without saying where "here" is. Coordinates are rounded to four decimal places (roughly 11 metres) and sent to:
api.weather.gov) — active marine
alerts for your position.archive-api.open-meteo.com) — historic
reanalysis wind, used only to back-fill conditions for sails recorded before Helm stamped
them.For buoys and tide gauges, Helm downloads the whole station list and picks the nearest station on your device. Those services only ever receive the name of a station:
ndbc.noaa.gov) — observed
wind.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov) — tide predictions and
current phase.erddap.marine.ie) — Irish tide gauge
network.These requests are serviced in real time and nothing about them is retained by me — I never receive them at all.
Helm is not directed at children and collects no data from anyone.
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and any change that affects what leaves your device will be called out in the app's release notes.
Questions about privacy, or anything else: [email protected]