Canvas Luff Tacks

There is one rule in sailing that almost no racing game gives you: you cannot steer straight at where you want to go. A sail needs air flowing across it, and inside roughly forty degrees either side of the wind there is no flow at all. That dead wedge is drawn live in front of your bow. If the next buoy sits inside it, the only way there is a zig-zag, and every turn through the wind costs you speed.

Canvas Luff Tacks is a top-down regatta built entirely on that idea. Drag anywhere on the water to point the bow. The hull turns at its own rate and carries its momentum through the swing, so a snap tack bleeds far more speed than a patient one. Boat speed comes from a real polar curve: nothing in the no-go zone, quickest with the wind on the beam, a shade slower dead downwind.

THE WIND IS THE REAL OPPONENT
The breeze swings slowly all race and blows harder in patches you can see coming as darker water ahead of you. A swing that lets you point closer to the mark is a lift; one that pushes you away is a header. Choosing which side of the course to take, and reading the water before you get there, is the whole game.

THREE RIVALS, THREE MINDS
Kestrel covers you and matches every tack you make. Halyard plays the favoured side of the next shift. Meridian ignores you both and sails its own conservative line. All three use exactly the same physics you do: the same polar curve, the same dead zone, the same price for every turn.

FIVE COURSES AND A PRACTICE WATER
A sheltered harbour beat, an open sound full of oscillating shifts, a channel where the gusts roll down in lanes, one enormous windward leg under a wind that veers all race, and a four-mark circuit in a cross breeze. Every course is seeded, so the shifts and the gusts come back exactly the same and you can genuinely learn them. The practice water drops the rivals and puts a live rotating polar diagram beside your boat.

ROUNDING COUNTS
Each buoy has to be left on the marked side. A dashed ring and a curved arrow show you the zone and the direction, and the app checks the side you actually passed, so you cannot cut a corner.

WHAT THE APP KEEPS
Your best time on every course, races won, turns through the wind, seconds stalled head to wind, and eight awards that reward sailing cleanly rather than just quickly. Everything survives a restart.

- Completely offline. No internet connection is needed or used at any point.
- No advertising of any kind.
- No sound at all, ever. Feedback is visual, with optional haptics.
- No accounts, no tracking, no in-app purchases.
- Portrait only, and every boat, buoy and ripple is drawn on the fly as vector graphics.

Bear away, build speed, and work the shifts.