Helm Sailing Apple Watch · iPhone · sailing instrument

The instrument on your wrist.
The coach on the way home.

Helm turns an Apple Watch into a sunlight-readable sailing instrument — speed over ground, course, wind, tide and a race countdown, all on the wrist where you can actually read them. Every sail lands on your iPhone as a full debrief: a replay you can scrub, a scorecard for every tack, your boat's measured polar, and a coach that tells you what to fix first. No account. No servers of ours, ever.

Get notified at launch See how it works

Free — the instrument and logbook, forever Apple Watch (watchOS 10+) · iPhone (iOS 17+) No account, no backend

Helm's session screen after a real sail: 57 minutes, 4.87 nautical miles, 8.3 knots maximum, 18 maneuvers, with north wind at 7 gusting 13 knots and the track drawn across Dublin Bay.
The difference

An instrument that tells you when it doesn't know.

Most sailing apps show you a number. Helm shows you a number and its provenance. Wind that came from a buoy is labelled OBS; wind that came from a model is labelled and named. Offline, readings carry an age stamp instead of a spinner — you see how old the data is, not a lie about it being live. And when a measurement is probably wrong, Helm says so rather than presenting it as fact.

The engine check

When your polar says you were making 8 knots upwind in 10 knots of breeze, you weren't sailing — the engine was on. Helm's polar detects that ratio and says so, instead of quietly baking a fantasy into your performance curve.

The suppressed finding

The coach won't compare your beats to a polar band it doesn't trust. A false standard is worse than no standard, so it stays silent.

Thin data stays visible

Polar cells built from fewer than 12 samples never join the curve, and every plotted point keeps its dot — so three data points can never masquerade as an envelope.

Four pages. Crown to switch. Gloves on.

Everything you need while you are sailing the boat, one crown turn apart — and nothing you don't.

DashboardSpeed over ground and course, in digits you can read in spray and full sun. START, STOP, GPS quality.

ChartNorth-up map locked to the boat, your track drawn behind you. Tap to cycle zoom. Nothing to get lost in.

ConditionsObserved wind from the nearest live buoy, bow-relative. Tide, current phase, and marine alerts — age-stamped offline.

Race timer5, 3 or 1 minute. SYNC snaps to the committee boat. Haptics count you down to the gun, wrist down.

Watch screens illustrated to scale — the real thing is brighter, and the numbers are yours.

Double-pinch works START and SYNC with wet gloves (watchOS 11+).

The Action Button or Siri starts a session without the screen.

A workout session keeps GPS and haptics alive for multi-hour sails.

How a sail works

Warm up at the dock

Open the app and speed, course and fix quality go live before you start. Confirm a good fix; nothing is recording yet.

START

One tap begins the sail. Distance, max and average accumulate; the phone mirrors every fix. The phone has no Start button on purpose: one recorder, never two.

Sail

Crown through the pages. Arm the race timer and tracking starts with it — the pre-start is part of the race.

STOP

The sail lands on your phone, even if the phone app was closed, and your full-rate track follows as a file. Then the debrief begins.

On the iPhone

Every sail, re-sailed.

The logbook is free and always will be. The analysis below is Helm Pro — the part that takes a recording and turns it into something you can act on.

Speed-coloured replay

Pro

Your track drawn in speed colours, with a scrubber at 30× and live time, speed, course and heart rate as you drag.

Maneuver scorecard

Pro

Every tack and jibe classified, with entry and exit speed, speed lost, and the seconds it took to rebuild to 95%. Best and worst badged.

Legs & VMG

Pro

The sail split at each maneuver, with mean course, distance, point of sail and velocity made good toward the wind.

The race window

Pro

A sail is dock-to-dock; a race isn't. Helm finds the race inside the recording, or you set it by hand, and every number recomputes for it.

Your polar

Pro

Every settled second of every sail becomes a measured point in your boat's performance envelope — at the 90th percentile, not the average.

The coach

Pro

Worst news first, each finding timestamped and tappable to scrub the replay to that exact moment.

The replay screen: a speed-coloured track across Dublin Bay with tack and jibe markers, a scrubber reading 4.3 knots and 84 beats per minute, and a speed curve beneath it.
The legs table: each leg with its time, course, point of sail — beat, reach, run or broad — speed, distance and velocity made good.

It tells you what to fix, in the order it cost you.

The coach reads your race the way a good tactician would on the way back in: the expensive mistakes first, the one thing you did right at the end.

Race debrief

Slow tack Costly

14:22:07 — Lost 2.4 kt and took 41 s to rebuild. Your median for the day was 1.1 kt and 18 s.

Never recovered Costly

14:31:50 — Speed never rebuilt to 95% before the next maneuver.

Double tack Watch

14:38:12 — Two tacks in 71 s, back within 9° of the original course. You paid for that line twice.

Beats below your polar Watch

Three beat legs made under 75% of your best upwind VMG for this wind band.

Best tack of the race Repeat

14:45:33 — 0.4 kt lost, back to full speed in 11 s. Do that one again.

  • Every finding carries the moment it happened, and tapping it scrubs the replay straight there.
  • Thresholds come from your day, not a textbook — a slow tack is slow relative to your own median.
  • It always finds your best tack too. A debrief that only scolds is one nobody opens twice.
Illustrative — findings are computed on your phone from your own track.

The polar you actually sail, not the one on the brochure.

A published polar tells you what the designer hoped the hull would do. This one is built from what your boat, your sails and your crew have actually done.

A measured polar diagram with three wind-band curves, showing best upwind velocity made good at 35 degrees and 5.1 knots, and best downwind at 175 degrees and 5.9 knots, built from 38,205 samples across 14 sails.

Every settled second of every sail becomes a (wind angle, wind speed, boat speed) sample — turns, the thirty seconds either side of a maneuver, and anything drifting under a knot all thrown away. What survives is binned by angle and wind band, and the curve is drawn at the 90th percentile: what the boat has done at that angle, not what it averaged.

The diagram beside this is real — a keelboat's envelope built from 38,205 samples across 14 sails in Dublin Bay, with best upwind VMG at 35° and best downwind at 175°.

  • The wind behind every angle is modelled, not measured at your masthead.
  • Speed is over the ground, so current and leeway are in the numbers.
  • Sails recorded before Helm stamped conditions get their wind back-filled from reanalysis archive data, tagged so you always know which is which.

No watch? The phone is the instrument.

Helm is built watch-first, but it records a complete sail on an iPhone alone — with everything the debrief needs.

Live Activity

Speed, course, distance and elapsed time on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island — readable on a cockpit mount without unlocking.

Voice

Start, stop, each tack by number, and a periodic speed and distance call — spoken over your audio, and off by default.

One recorder

If the watch is tracking, the phone's START is disabled and says why. One sail, one set of numbers, never two.

Helm on iPhone showing 2.3 knots and course 120 degrees, a map of Dun Laoghaire Harbour, and a Record on iPhone button marked no watch needed.

Public data, on your device.

  • Observed windThe NOAA National Data Buoy Center network, when a live buoy is close enough to be your weather.
  • Tide & currentNOAA CO-OPS predictions, and the Marine Institute's gauge network in Irish waters.
  • Marine alertsThe US National Weather Service, severity ranked so a fog advisory can't bury a gale warning.
  • Forecast windApple Weather, wherever no buoy is in range — labelled so you always know it is modelled.
  • Historic windReanalysis archive data, used only to back-fill sails recorded before Helm stamped their conditions.

Recording, analytics, the polar and the coach all run on your device. There is no Helm account and no Helm server. Your logbook backs up to your own private iCloud, which only you can read. The only network calls Helm makes are to public weather and tide services, and to Apple's.

Read the full privacy policy →

Where Helm sits

Two kinds of app already live on a sailor's phone. Helm is neither of them.

  Helm Sailing Phone-first sail trackers Navigation apps
Where you read it On the wrist, sunlight-readable Phone screen, in a pocket or a bag Phone or tablet at the nav station
What it's for Sailing the boat, then improving Logging the outing Getting there
Post-sail analysis Replay, legs, maneuver scorecard, coach Distance and a map Not the job
Performance envelope Measured from your own sails — Manufacturer polars, if any
Race start Countdown with committee-boat sync and haptics — —
Account required None Usually Usually
Data honesty Provenance labels, age stamps, self-suppressing metrics Varies Varies

What you need

Free instrument, paid intelligence

What's free today stays free.

Free, forever

No account · No subscription

  • The instrument on watch and phone — speed, course, chart, conditions, race timer
  • The logbook: every sail, its stats, its track and its map
  • The live mirror from watch to phone
  • GPX export — your tracks, out, any time

Helm Pro

Optional in-app purchase

  • The replay, the legs table and the maneuver scorecard
  • The race window and the coach
  • Your measured polar across every sail
  • In development: the race pack (start line, shift tracking, marks) and the cruise pack (anchor watch, passage log)
Get notified at launch

No account · Your logbook stays in your iCloud · Pricing not announced

Questions

Do I need an Apple Watch?

No. iPhone-only mode records a full sail with a Lock Screen Live Activity and spoken calls. But the watch is the better instrument, and Helm is built watch-first.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Recording, analytics, the polar and the coach are all on-device. Weather and tide need a connection to refresh; offline you keep the last reading with its age stamp, which is a fact rather than a spinner.

Do I need an account?

No. There is no Helm account and no Helm server. Your logbook backs up to your own private iCloud database, which only you can read.

What does it do to my battery?

Continuous GPS costs a modern iPhone roughly 5–8% an hour. On the watch, the chart page costs more than the dashboard, so it only renders while you are looking at it.

Where does the wind data come from?

Observed wind from the nearest live NDBC buoy when there is one within range, otherwise Apple Weather's forecast — and the app always tells you which one you are looking at.

Can I get my tracks out?

Yes. GPX export per sail, or every sail at once from Settings. The same screen erases everything, including the iCloud copy.

Is the polar accurate?

It is measured, which is a different claim. Wind is modelled rather than read off your masthead and speed is over the ground, so current and leeway are baked in. Helm states this on the screen and flags the cases it can detect, like the engine being on.

When can I get it?

Helm is finished and in review for the App Store. Ask to be told when it lands and you will hear the day it does.