Getting Started with Tracking Your Sailing Activities
Most sailors who want to start tracking their sessions don't get stopped by the analysis. They get stopped earlier, before the first session is even recorded, by not knowing which hardware to use, whether their existing GPS is good enough, or what the actual process looks like from pressing record to seeing their data on screen. That uncertainty is enough for most people to put it off until next season, and next season has a habit of never arriving.
This guide is about getting past that first step. There are three realistic routes into sailing data: uploading from a GPS device you already own, using a smartphone app mounted on the boat, and running a dedicated sailing instrument. Each requires different hardware, gives you different information, and suits a different kind of sailor. The goal here is to help you work out which path makes sense for where you are now and get your first session recorded and uploaded before the week is out.
Start With What You Already Own: Uploading a Garmin GPX File
If you own a Garmin — a Forerunner, a Fenix, an Instinct, a Dakota, or any of the outdoor GPS watches or handhelds — you almost certainly have enough to get started today. The same applies to most other GPS watches and dedicated loggers. These devices record your position at regular intervals throughout your session and store it in a standard format called GPX. That file is all SailingMetrics needs to give you a full track analysis.
Getting the file out of your device depends on which one you have, but the process is broadly the same across the range. On most Garmin watches, you open Garmin Connect on your phone or computer, find the activity recorded during your sail, and use the export option to download the GPX file. On older handheld GPS units, you may need to connect the device to your computer with a USB cable and navigate to the activities folder directly. Either way, you end up with a file that you upload to SailingMetrics through the upload page, select your boat class, and submit.
Once it's processed — which takes a few minutes — you get the full session displayed on a map with a timeline scrubber. You can see your speed at any point in the session, the heading you were sailing, and your Velocity Made Good (VMG) on each leg. If you upload tracks from multiple sessions, you can compare your average speeds in similar wind conditions over time and start to see whether you're actually improving or just feeling like you are.
What you won't get from a GPS device is heel angle. Garmin and similar devices record position. They don't have an accelerometer mounted in the right orientation to measure how much the boat is heeling throughout the session. For most sailors starting out, this isn't a problem — track shape, SOG, and VMG will keep your attention for the first several sessions and there is plenty to learn. But it is the limit of what a standalone GPS can give you, and it's worth understanding from the start so you know when it makes sense to move to the next step.
The process is low friction. If you already own the device, there's nothing to buy, nothing to mount on the boat, and no risk of losing anything expensive overboard. Your Garmin lives on your wrist as usual, you record an activity as you would for any other sport, and the data is waiting when you get back to shore. That's the right way to start if you've been putting it off.
Why You Might Want a Phone on the Water
A GPS device records your position. A smartphone, running the SailingMetrics app, records several things a GPS can't.
The most significant difference is heel angle. The app uses the phone's accelerometer — the same sensor that knows whether you're holding your phone portrait or landscape — to measure how much the boat is heeling throughout the session. This gets calculated alongside your GPS metrics and is available both in real time on the water and in the post-session analysis ashore. For a dinghy sailor, heel data is genuinely useful in a way that's hard to replicate without it. Most sailors think they're sailing flatter than they actually are. The numbers are often a surprise.
The app also gives you audio callouts: speed, VMG, and heading announced at regular intervals while you're sailing. On an ILCA, in particular, where you're hiking hard and the boat is moving fast, having your speed called out every thirty seconds gives you a reference point that's useful in the moment rather than something you reconstruct afterwards from a graph. Beyond that, the app can record video, detect tacks automatically, and measure the height gained or lost on every tack in a structured training drill. None of this has an equivalent on a GPS device.
Setting Up a Phone on the Water
The most common question when people first consider using a phone on the water is whether to use their regular phone. The short answer is: don't. Mounting a phone on a dinghy means it will get wet, it will get knocked, and if the mount fails or the boat capsizes badly, it will go overboard. Using your everyday phone introduces a level of anxiety about equipment that gets in the way of sailing. The better approach is a dedicated device that you don't mind being on the boat.
Most SailingMetrics users who sail this way run a dedicated phone, specifically the Ulefone Armor X13. It's an Android phone with IP69K waterproofing — which means it handles high-pressure water jets, not just splashing — a large battery that typically lasts a full day's sailing, and a price point that makes it a reasonable piece of boat kit rather than a piece of personal electronics you're terrified of losing. It's not a powerful smartphone in the conventional sense: the processor is basic and the camera is adequate rather than outstanding. For GPS logging, live metrics, and recording sailing sessions, it's exactly what's needed.
One question that comes up consistently is whether the phone needs a SIM card. It doesn't, for basic use. The app records your GPS track locally using the phone's built-in GPS sensor. When you get back ashore, you connect to WiFi and upload the session to SailingMetrics. The whole process works without a mobile data connection. A SIM is only necessary if you want features that require a live internet connection during the session — specifically, live location streaming so someone ashore can follow your position in real time, or remote coaching where a coach is watching your video and audio feed while you sail. For straightforward session recording and upload, WiFi after the fact is all you need.
Mounting the phone is the part of the setup that takes a little thought. For a dinghy like the ILCA, the most practical solution is a RAM-style ball mount with a phone holder, fixed to the cockpit coaming rail. This positions the phone at a readable angle when you glance at it, keeps it clear of the mainsheet, and — if you want video — gives the camera a useful forward-facing view over the bow. The arm needs to be stiff rather than flexible. A gooseneck-style arm looks appealing because it lets you adjust the angle easily, but it bounces in chop and the footage becomes unwatchable. A rigid arm with a fixed-angle head gives you stable video and holds position in rough water.
The phone goes on before you launch, not after. Starting a session on the dock before pushing off means you don't lose the first few minutes of sailing to the GPS acquiring its fix, and you avoid the risk of fumbling with a mount while you're already on the water. At the end of the session, stop the recording while you're still tied up, not while you're sailing past the dock.
What the App Shows You on the Water
The main screen you'll use on the water is the Live Metrics display. It shows Speed Over Ground, VMG, Course Over Ground, heel angle, and compass heading simultaneously, each averaged over a configurable integration period. A short integration period — five to ten seconds — gives you a reading that responds quickly to changes in how you're sailing. A longer period smooths out the noise and shows you the trend. In practice, most sailors prefer a medium integration period upwind, where they want to know whether their groove is holding, and a shorter one on downwind legs where they're making faster decisions about angle.
Audio callouts run on a separate timer. You set the interval — thirty seconds works well for most people — and the app reads out the metric you've chosen at each tick. Speed is the most common choice. Some sailors prefer VMG on upwind legs and switch to SOG for downwind work. The announcement comes through the phone's speaker, which is adequate if the phone is mounted nearby, or through a Bluetooth speaker if you want more volume in a breeze.
Video recording runs in the background from the same session start. The footage is timestamped against the GPS data, so when you review it ashore, you can scrub the GPS timeline and watch what was happening in the boat at any point in the session. This is particularly useful for tack analysis: you can see the speed trace drop through the tack and watch the video at the same moment to understand what happened physically.
The tacking training mode is a separate screen designed for structured drills. It tells you when to tack using a spoken countdown, records your speed before and after each tack, and calculates the height gained or lost based on your VMG through the manoeuvre. After each tack it announces the result. Over a session of twenty or thirty tacks you build up a dataset that shows whether you're improving, which tack is consistently weaker, and how your technique holds up as you get tired.
Dedicated Sailing Devices: Vakaros, Calypso, and Others
Beyond smartphones and standard GPS devices, there's a category of hardware built specifically for sailing performance that's worth knowing about, particularly if you're looking for more accurate data or already have instruments on the boat.
The Vakaros Atlas is the most capable option in this space for dinghy sailors. It's a small, waterproof sailing computer that attaches to the boat and records GPS at a much higher update rate than a phone or watch, along with heel and pitch, and wind data from an attached sensor. The device is significantly more accurate than any phone GPS for the fast position changes that happen in tack-intensive dinghy sailing, and the heel data is more reliable than phone accelerometer data because the sensor is fixed to the boat rather than held in a mount that can flex. It's expensive relative to a second phone, but if you want the most accurate possible dataset it's the right tool.
The Calypso range takes a different approach, focusing on wind measurement rather than position. A Calypso ultrasonic anemometer mounts on the mast or a bracket and measures wind speed and direction with no moving parts, so there's nothing to break or foul in a capsize. Combined with GPS from a phone or separate device, wind data adds another dimension to post-session analysis — you can see how your boat speed responded to each wind shift throughout the session, rather than inferring shifts from changes in your COG.
Other sailors use connected sailing watches, notably the Garmin Quatix range, which has Bluetooth integration with compatible instruments and can display and log data from the boat's own transducers. For keelboat sailors with existing instrument installations, this route lets them capture more without changing the boat's equipment.
All of these devices produce data in standard formats that can be exported and uploaded to SailingMetrics in the same way as a Garmin GPX file. The hardware decides the quality and variety of the data. SailingMetrics handles the analysis and storage.
What You Actually See After Uploading
Whatever device you use to record your session, the upload process is the same: select the file or sync directly from the app, assign it to a boat class, and submit. Within a few minutes the session appears in your activity log with a map of the track, a timeline of your speed and other metrics, and a breakdown of the key numbers from the session.
The track replay lets you scrub through the session and watch your position move along the route you sailed. The colour of the track changes with speed, so at a glance you can see where the boat was fast and where it slowed. Tacks and gybes show up as direction changes, and you can click on any point to read the exact metrics at that moment.
The metric charts show SOG, VMG, COG, and heel angle as a function of time across the whole session. These are most useful for identifying patterns: a consistent drop in VMG on port tack relative to starboard, a speed recovery that takes longer after gybes than after tacks, a heel angle that drifts upward during long downwind legs. None of these patterns are obvious in the moment. They become clear when you can see the whole session laid out on a timeline.
If you sail the same course with other sailors who are also using SailingMetrics, the course analysis tool lets you compare tracks leg by leg. This is where the platform's value becomes most obvious. Seeing where you positioned yourself relative to a faster sailor on the same beat, and reading the VMG numbers for both of you on that leg, turns vague impressions about why someone beat you into specific, addressable questions.
Over time, the data accumulates into something more valuable than individual sessions. A season of GPX files from your club racing, uploaded consistently, gives you a performance history that shows real trends — whether your tack quality improved after a period of structured drills, whether your upwind speed in stronger winds has developed, where your fastest and slowest sessions in terms of VMG cluster across different conditions. One session is useful. A season of them is a genuine training resource.
The Right First Step
If you own any GPS device already, record your next session the way you normally would and upload the GPX file when you get home. That single session will give you more to look at than most sailors expect. The track shape alone, before you look at any metrics, will show you things about how you sailed the race that aren't obvious from memory.
If you want to use the app on the water and you don't have a dedicated phone for it yet, the decision is simpler than it might seem. A rugged Android phone — the Ulefone Armor X13 is the reliable choice at a sensible price — a RAM mount for your coaming rail, and the SailingMetrics app is all you need. The total outlay is modest. The setup takes an hour, most of which is working out exactly where on the coaming rail to fix the mount base so it doesn't interfere with anything.
The one thing that doesn't help is waiting for the perfect setup. A GPX file from an entry-level GPS watch is more useful than no data at all, and a season of consistently recorded sessions from basic hardware will tell you more about your sailing than a handful of sessions on high-end instruments that only come out for the important races.
Start with what you have. Create a free account, upload your next session, and see what the data shows. The analysis is the easy part once the data is there.