For Local Sailors

Turn up and race. The course card is already in your pocket.

Tell Race Marks your class and your day. “Course A4 for Cruisers 2” becomes an ordered list of marks with rounding directions, a picture of each buoy, and a countdown that already knows your start time. Virtually no setup.

Race Marks running on two phones — live mark navigation and the course list

Race night, in order

Four moments where a club racer loses time or confidence. Race Marks takes each one.

1. “What’s the course?”

Your club publishes the course card, the sailing instructions and the notices. Race Marks pulls them together in one place, filtered to your class on this date — so you're not scrolling a PDF on a phone in the rain.

Race Marks links to what your club publishes and re-hosts nothing without agreement. The club's own notices remain the definitive word on race night.

Race documents screen listing sailing instructions and notices

2. “Which course are we on, and when do we go?”

Your day, your start location, the VHF channel and the wind direction — then the courses your class can actually be sent, with distance and mark count. Pick the one the committee signals and you're set up.

The countdown comes from your club's race programme, so your class's scheduled start time is already in — nothing to type in the two minutes when you should be looking at the line. An Apple Watch companion puts the same countdown on the helm's wrist.

Pre-start screen showing the day, start location, VHF channel, wind direction and the available courses

3. “Which buoy is that, and which way round?”

The marks come out in order, with their names, their shape and colour, and the rounding direction — port or starboard — for your course, over a diagram of the whole lap. The bit everyone gets wrong once a season, handled.

Course details showing the ordered mark sequence, rounding directions and a diagram of the course

4. “Are we there yet?”

Live bearing and distance to the next mark, updated from the phone's GPS, with the next mark previewed so the crew can be set up before you get there. Round it and the app advances on its own.

Active navigation screen showing bearing and distance to the next mark

No instruments? Nothing here needs them.

Everything on this page runs off the phone in your pocket. Wind gear, a log, a chartplotter, NMEA — none of it is required for course cards, the mark list, the countdown or mark-to-mark navigation.

A phone is enough

Position, bearing, distance and auto-advance all come from the phone's GPS. Bring a way to keep it charged and dry — that's the whole kit list.

Every boat you race

Add each boat you sail on and switch between them in one tap. Crew can join a boat from a QR code or short code the owner shares.

Custom courses

Build a practice course from your club's known marks when the committee isn't out — training nights, class practice, a scratch race.

Is my club in there?

Clubs and organisations live in the app today. If yours isn't listed, vote for it — that's how we pick who to onboard next.

Dublin Bay Sailing Club — Summer 2026 ISORA — Irish Coastal 2026 Royal Cork Yacht Club — Cork Week 2026 Vote for your club →

Race Marks works from the documents a club already publishes — no formal endorsement or commercial arrangement with the club is required.

Get Race Marks

Race Marks v1.3 is live on iOS and Android. Local pricing is shown in the app.

Want the numbers too? See the performance stack.