Sailing without leaving home. Going to sea without putting on your foulies. Feel the sea breeze while staying on your sofa. Sailaway is a sailing simulator. It allows you to learn how to sail using your computer.
How to sail without a boat?
Its designer, a Dutch computer scientist, chose to develop this game when he couldn't make it on a long cruise. In the absence of a real boat, he imagined a simulator that would allow him to escape.
Real weather conditions
Contrary to other simulators (Virtual Skipper comes to mind), with Sailaway you can sail on all the seas of the world and experience the real weather. Indeed, the game reproduces world maps and the weather sources are those of NOAA files. You can live in real time the wind, sea and rain conditions everywhere in the world.
No realistic representation
If the game leaves the possibility to navigate everywhere, the rendering of the coasts is not frankly realistic. Indeed, the simulator is limited to setting up buildings along the coast to represent a city. We will also be able to see lighthouses or beacons, but not the right graphic representations.
Possible Transat
With Sailaway you can go on a cruise, even if it's far away. You can even leave the simulator running when you are not in front of the keyboard. You can therefore make a "real" deckchair by following the days of navigation. The simulator sends you alerts by email when conditions change.
All possible settings
The simulator is very advanced in terms of sail adjustments. You can act on all halyards, sheets or even carriage trimming. In this totally manual use, the number of adjustments and possibilities makes the use more complex. Fortunately an automatic trimming system makes the use of the simulator much easier.
Details to be fine-tuned
Sailaway can be used as a simulator or to race against other users. The simulator leaves the choice between several boats. You can choose a Mini 650 or even a cruising catamaran. As often on simulators, the rendering is quite basic (passage in the sea in particular), but the whole is of good quality. Some problems remain to be corrected. I did not manage to sail in very strong winds even when I went to position myself in the 40th... The first version which has been tested by a community has just been validated and put online. I'm sure that this simulation will evolve for more finesse.
Available and not expensive
This software is available on the Steam platform at 36.99 euros which runs on both PC and Mac. Be careful, its use requires a hardware configuration big enough to get all the quintessence of the game. In comparison, Virtual Skipper, which has been running on PC for many years, costs 99 euros and only offers the possibility to navigate on a few lakes.
