Here's a scene you've probably lived.

You just had a great day on the water. Six boats, tight racing, some really interesting wind shifts. You want to look at the data and figure out what happened on that second beat where everything changed.

Except only two people recorded. One has a Garmin file they'll email you tomorrow. The other forgot to stop recording and has 9 hours of GPS noise. Nobody else brought a device.

So you debrief from memory, argue about who was on the right side of the first shift, and promise yourselves you'll all record next time. You won't.

This is the coordination problem that kills fleet data. It's not that sailors don't want to analyze their sailing. It's that getting everyone to record, export, and upload in a way that ends up in the same session is an unreasonable amount of logistics for a Wednesday evening race.

We built groups to fix this.

Download. Create a group. Go sailing.

ChartedSails is now on the App Store, and this is the part that matters most: groups.

Here's how it works:

Step 1: One person creates a group. You pick a name ("HMBYC Laser Fleet", "Tuesday Training", etc), and you get a 6-letter code.

Step 2: Share the code. Text it to your fleet WhatsApp. Pin it on the club noticeboard. Say it at the skippers' meeting. Everyone downloads the free app and joins with the code. Takes 30 seconds.

Step 3: Go sailing. Everyone hits record. The app runs in the background — no fiddling, no settings to configure. When you come back in and reconnect to wifi or cell, the data uploads automatically.

That's it. All the tracks end up together. You can see the fleet on the map, replay the race, see who went left and who went right, and how the fleet spread out on each beat.

The setup takes 2 minutes. After that, it's zero effort every time you sail. The app just works.

One boat is data. Six boats is a story.

Here's the thing about sailing data that we've learned from working with thousands of sessions: a single GPS trace is interesting, but it can only tell you so much.

You can see your own track. You can see your speed. But you can't answer the question that actually matters: why did I finish where I finished?

Add the rest of the fleet, and suddenly the data comes alive:

• You can see that the boats that went right on the first beat gained 50 meters. Was it a shift? A current line? Now you know.
• You can see that your tacks took 2 seconds longer than the boat that beat you. That's 8 seconds over 4 tacks. That's the margin.
• You can see that you were 0.3 knots slower upwind but 0.5 knots faster downwind — so the race was lost on the beats, not the runs.

None of this is visible from a single track. The fleet context is what turns GPS data into actual insight. And groups are what make fleet context effortless.

This is already working

Groups have been running in the wild for months.

Gavin Ball's Waszp fleet in Kaneohe, Hawaii has logged 16 sessions over their winter training season. Pearl (Waszp Female World Champion) trains with him. She uploads every single time using her Garmin watch. No nagging, no reminders. The data syncs automatically. It's always there.

Ravi Parent coaches A-Cat groups in Florida. His UKSC A-Class fleet has 6 members, 10 sessions — mostly captured with Vakaros. Ravi himself has analyzed over 34 sessions across multiple groups spanning two years. He uses a different group for each fleet he coaches — one coach, multiple programs, all in one place.

Laser sailors training in Lanzarote recorded 10 sessions over their winter period, averaging 2.7 hours each. This isn't casual sailing — it's structured coaching, and the data backs up every debrief.

And of course America One Racing uses groups to coordinate their Waszp Olympic campaign program. 22 members, 29 sessions, with coaches Leandro Spina, Ravi Parent, and Ben Rosenberg all managing the data. More details here.

The pattern is the same everywhere: one person sets up the group, shares the code, and the whole fleet is on data within a day.

It's free

Groups are free. Creating one, joining one, recording — all free. Everyone in the group sees all the GPS traces, the replay, speed and course for every boat. That's already a fundamentally better debrief than arguing from memory at the bar.

Getting started

If you're an iPhone user:

1. Download ChartedSails from the App Store
2. Create an account (or sign in if you already have one)
3. Tap "Groups" and create a new group
4. Share the code with your fleet
5. Go sailing this weekend

If you're already a ChartedSails user on the web:

You can create groups on the web too (menu -> Groups -> Create Group). Your existing account works across both. Everything syncs — sessions you record on the phone show up on the web, and vice versa.

If you're on Android:

We're working on it. Sign up here to join the Android beta and be the first to know when it's ready.

Set up your fleet before opening day

Racing season is starting. Spring series, frostbite finales, the first warm-weather regattas — it's all about to kick off.

This is the best time to set up your group: before the season starts, while everyone's planning and motivated. Share the code at your next fleet meeting, in your WhatsApp group, or at the bar after the first race. Get people on the app now so that by opening day, the whole fleet is recording without thinking about it.

The coordination problem is solved. The app is free. The only thing left is to share the code.