Easy Sail: Learn to Sail

We do not explain how sailing works. You find out. Easy Sail is for someone who has never been out on the water. There is wind, there is a boat, and there is one instruction: make the boat move. You turn towards the wind. The sail loses its shape and the boat dies. You turn away, the sail fills, and the boat goes. That is the moment you understand the relationship between wind, boat and sail — without anyone having told you. THE WORDS COME LAST Most sailing lessons open with terminology. This one does the opposite: you feel it first and learn what it is called afterwards. You find the dead zone yourself; only then do we name it. You work out for yourself that getting upwind means zig-zagging; the word "tacking" arrives after. THE COURSE: ELEVEN SHORT DISCOVERIES, IN TWO ACTS At sea — making her go • Make the boat move — why a boat cannot sail straight into the wind • Reach the buoy — why speed depends on your angle to the wind • The buoy upwind — tacking • Make the boat faster — sail trim • Turn through the wind — the maneuver itself • Turn with the wind behind you — the jibe, and why the boom matters In the harbor — making her stop • Stop at the mooring — a sailing boat has no brakes • Come alongside — why you always arrive into the wind • Anchor beside the mark — why the anchor goes upwind of where you want to lie • Get off the shore — why a lee shore is left by beating, not by running • Stern-to the quay — what is really holding you off it At the end of each act, what you found out is read back to you. After both, the sea is yours. HARBOR MANEUVERS Then the engine, and the part of sailing that happens at a walking pace two meters from someone else's boat. Twenty maneuvers, one at a time and in any order: backing into a berth between two boats, leaving it with the wind across, working up to windward first, turning in a tight fairway, coming alongside, rafting up, springing off a wall, anchoring and weighing, picking up a buoy. Each one leads into the next — tie her up, cast off, and motor on to the next berth. The ropes come off in an order, and nothing stops you getting it wrong. You find out why there is an order. The first two maneuvers are free. The other eighteen open with a single one-time purchase; nothing is a subscription. The course is free and stays free. WHAT IT IS NOT Not a test. No scores, streaks or badges. Not a simulator claiming realism either — the aim is to feel right, not to compute right. No ads. No account. No data collected. The only thing the app ever talks to is the App Store, for the purchase.