FairWinds Documentation

Welcome to FairWinds! FairWinds is a virtual sailing platform that combines navigation strategy and sailing physics with real time weather and competitive multiplayer racing and world exploration.

• Absolute Essentials
• Getting Started - Fast
• Getting Started - In depth
• Advanced topics

Absolute Essentials

• Browser-based - no apps or downloads. Works in all modern browsers on all platforms. There is no 'app' yet, but the web view on mobile is 'mobile designed' and is excellent on most phones.
• Multi-lingual - FW supports English, French, and Italian language. More available upon request. Be sure to select your langauge preference in the profile page.
• Real-time Weather Data - NOAA GFS 0.25° wind forecast updates every 6 hours: 00z, 06z, 12z, 18z with the previous forecast time. 00z forecasts goes live 06z, 06z forecast goes live 12z, etc. This is because, counterintuitively, forecasts aren't actually released until 4 hours after forecast time e.g. 00z data is available at 0400z.
• NMEA Data - An NMEA port is assigned to each race and each boat. Every race has a 'detail' page and the nmea port for your boat and race is listed there. For Pro users NMEA is availabe on all races. For basic account levels it is available on all practice races and for 1 credit in official content.
• Membership - Monthly and Annual subscriptions (aka "Pro") get you access to everything in the entire game. No upsells. You can also buy individual 'race credits' to fully unlock Pro races and NMEA without needing a subscription. Race credits are a cheap way to try out pro content without subscriptions.
• Racing and Exploration - Community events are a great way to get started racing. FairWinds also has a number of 'expeditions' - these are done at your own pace and usually follow a theme (e.g. 'follow in the path of Joshua Slocum')

Getting Started Fast

New to FairWinds? After creating your account here's the absolute fastest way to get started:

1. Watch this getting started video (5 minutes)
2. Play with the wind. Basically each button in the wind control panel toggles a wind layer on/off. The wind map has the same controls as the races: https://fairwinds.world/wind/map
3. Do a practice race. From the dashboard page click on Practice -> Show all. The Waikiki practice is 1nm and takes 10 minutes.
4. Here are the 3 most important buttons in the race viewer:

Zooming and panning - FairWinds relies heavily on map interactions and acts just like all online maps. Having a good mouse with a scrollable wheel helps a lot to quickly zoom in/out. Click and hold to pan the map left/right, up/down.

More Learning

1. Watch this comprehensive 30 minute end-to-end tutorial where FairWinds is explained.

2. Dive into each feature, about 5 minutes each, outlined below.

3. All the buttons in the race viewer

   1. Walk through all the buttons in the race viewer

4. FairWinds fundamentals

   1. Boat polars and performance
   2. Wind forecast update schedule
   3. How to avoid crashing
   4. FairWinds race types - expeditions, sailing trials, single & double-handed

5. Routing with waypoints

   1. Manual routes
   2. NMEA
   3. Importing route .gpx's

6. Scheduling waypoints

   1. Manually creating waypoints
   2. Importing from QTVLM

7. Sailing in modes

   1. TWA, VMG, VMC

Advanced topics

Navigating currents in FairWinds

Routing with currents

How routers work and the FW internal router

Getting Good & Winning

Need Help?

• FairWinds has a very active Discord (chat app) community, with a dedicated channel for help and questions. Please join us: discord.gg/qS3UVQzF6S . Ask for @Daedalus / Alex (founder of FW)
• E-mail to contact@fairwinds.world. All languages welcome.