Skipper's manual

xregatta is a sailboat race in your browser. You steer and trim a 30 ft sloop from the helm, in wind that shifts and gusts, against other skippers.

1. Getting on the water
2. The race
3. Sailing the boat
4. Wind, water and other boats
5. The screen
6. The race chart
7. Controls
8. Your account
9. When something goes wrong

1 · Getting on the water

Practice alone

On the front page, Practice alone starts a race straight away, with no account. You sail against Wabbit, the pace boat. Alone, you can pause and restart.

Race with others

1. Sign in with Google. The first time, you choose a skipper name: 3 to 20 letters, digits or dashes. It is the name other skippers see.
2. Pick a room. Waiting rooms are fleets gathering before a start. Races under way can still be joined: you start from behind the line. Each room shows who is in it and how many places are left (12 boats to a room).
3. Or open a room of your own, give it a name, and tell your friends which one to join.
4. Join. The game loads and puts you in the room. Leave room, in the race panel, brings you back to the list.

You are in one race at a time. Joining a room from another window or device takes you out of the one you were in.

If you leave a race, or lose your connection, the race goes on without you. Join the room again and you find every other boat where it has got to; you start again from behind the line. A room with nobody left in it stays open for five minutes.

When nobody else is about, the rooms regatta and harbour are kept going by computer-sailed skippers of different abilities, so there is always a fleet to race.

2 · The race

The course

The course is a one nautical mile beat: from the start line straight upwind to the finish mark. Since no boat can sail straight into the wind, you get there by tacking, and choosing when to tack is most of the race.

Warm-up, countdown, gun

• A room opens in a warm-up. Everyone sails about freely while the fleet gathers.
• The host, the skipper who has been in the room longest, presses Start the race. Every boat is placed behind the start line and a 60 second countdown begins. (Practicing alone, the countdown is 30 seconds and starts at once.)
• During the countdown you may sail anywhere. Use it to be close to the line, moving fast, when the gun goes.
• Twenty seconds after the last skipper finishes, the room goes back to the warm-up, ready for the next race. The host can also end a race early.

Starting properly

The start line runs between two green buoys. To start, cross it towards the course, between the buoys, after the gun.

• If you are over the line at the gun you are OVER EARLY and have not started. Go back behind the line and cross it again.
• Passing outside the buoys does not count: you stay NOT STARTED until you cross between them.
• Only a boat that has started can finish. Times are counted from the gun, not from when you cross.

Under the chart, a line tells you how many seconds early or late you will reach the line at your present speed. Aim for "on time".

Wabbit

Wabbit is the pace boat. It sails about as well as the boat can be sailed: best angles upwind, tacking on the shifts, reefing when it blows. It starts behind everyone and gets no favours. Finishing near Wabbit is a very good race; beating it is something to tell people about.

3 · Sailing the boat

The wheel

Turn the wheel with the arrow keys or A D; Space centres it. The rudder only works when water flows past it: a stopped boat does not steer. The red spoke on the wheel is at the top when the rudder is centred.

The sails

The boat has a mainsail and a jib, each with a sheet. Pull a sheet in as you sail closer to the wind, ease it as you bear away. The sail panel tells you how each sail is doing:

Auto-trim (T, or the box in the sail panel) has the crew set both sheets for you, so you can concentrate on steering and tactics. It is on when a race starts, and the sheet sliders then show what the crew is doing. Move a sheet yourself, with its keys or its slider, and the sheets are yours from where the crew left them: the boom and the jib swing as you trim. Press T to hand them back.

Too much wind

In a breeze the boat heels hard, slides sideways and gets heavy on the helm. Reduce sail with the Main area slider (reefing) and the Jib area slider (furling). A flatter boat is often a faster one.

In irons

Point the boat too close to the wind and the sails stop driving. The boat slows, stops and will not steer: you are IN IRONS. Centre the wheel and wait: with auto-trim on, the crew back the jib to push the bow away from the wind. (Trimming by hand, press T to call the crew back.) When the sails fill, sail on and build speed before you try to turn again.

Tack with speed. Go into a tack slowly and you may not come out of it.

4 · Wind, water and other boats

• The wind shifts and gusts. A shift that lets you point closer to the mark is a lift; one that forces you away is a header. Tacking on a header is the classic way to gain.
• Dirty air. Every boat's sails leave slowed, disturbed air streaming away downwind of it. Sail in it and you can lose up to about half your wind close behind another boat, fading over a hundred metres or so. The screen says DIRTY AIR and how much you are losing. Tack away, or sail clear.
• Contact. Hulls are solid. Boats that touch are pushed apart, slowed and turned. Nobody gains from a collision.
• Current carries the boat over the ground and changes the wind you feel.
• Waves slow the boat, most of all when you sail into them, and roll it.
• Leeway. The boat slides a little sideways as well as going forward. Sailing too close to the wind, or with too much heel, makes it worse.

5 · The screen

You look out from the helm. Drag to look around, scroll to zoom, and press F or double-click to face forward again.

• Race panel (top left): the countdown or race time, distance to the finish, the true wind, your room, and the buttons to start a race, leave the room, open the chart and change the view and the language.
• Instruments (bottom left): compass heading, apparent and true wind, boat speed, heel and leeway.
• Sail panel (bottom right): wheel, sheets and sail area as sliders, how each sail is drawing, and the auto-trim switch.
• Messages (top centre): the countdown, GO, and warnings such as OVER EARLY, DIRTY AIR, CONTACT and IN IRONS.
• At the helm (top right): the list of keys. It opens as a header only; double-click it, or press H, to open and close it.

View modes

V switches between the two ways the scene is drawn, or pick one in the race panel. The game starts in Real.

If the game runs slowly on your machine, try Wire.

Language

English and French. The box at the top of the race panel switches at once; the website has its own switch at the top of the page.

6 · The race chart

C shows the race from above, north up: small, large, then off. It shows:

• the start line, the finish, and the straight line between them;
• the laylines to the finish, redrawn as the wind shifts. Past the green one you can reach the mark on starboard tack; past the red one, on port. Sailing beyond a layline is distance wasted;
• every boat with its name and track, and a line to where yours will be in a minute;
• the dirty air behind each boat, as a faint plume to stay out of;
• the wind at your boat, and a scale.

Auto frames the start line until you have started and the whole course after that. Course and Boat hold one frame; scroll over the chart to zoom.

Under the chart are the standings: finishers by time, then the boats still racing by distance to go, with the gap to the leader.

7 · Controls

The sail panel has the same controls as sliders, plus main reef and jib furl. A keyboard is strongly recommended.

8 · Your account

• You sign in with Google so that nobody else can race under your name. Google's screen says it will share your name, email address and picture; xregatta does not use or keep them.
• All that is kept is your skipper name and Google's identifier for your account. No email, no password.
• Some names are reserved (the game's own boats and skippers, and names that would pass for the site's staff), and a name already taken cannot be taken again.
• Sign out, at the top of the front page, ends your session on that browser.

9 · When something goes wrong

Back to the races