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Sail the real ocean.
Race the real weather.

Offshore Racing is a free browser sailing simulation played on a live 3D globe. Boats sail on real GFS wind forecasts and HYCOM ocean currents, performance comes from real polar diagrams, and your boat keeps sailing even while you're offline. Read the weather, plan your maneuvers, and beat the fleet.

Start Sailing — It's Free

Sailboat racing on the 3D globe with animated wind particles
Live wind animation
Projected course line showing where wind and current will carry the boat
Projected course
Close-up orbit camera view of a racing sailboat
Orbit camera

How to Play

Welcome aboard. This is a navigator's game: you don't trim sails hands-on — you pick the course, and the weather decides whether it was a good one. Everything below takes about five minutes to learn.

Getting started

  1. Create an account (or sign in with Google) and open the Hub.
  2. Pick an event from the races strip — a ranked race, a time trial against the clock, or practice to roam freely.
  3. Your boat spawns at the start. From here on it's you against the wind.

Steering your boat

The command card offers two ways to steer. Heading holds a fixed compass course. TWA lock holds a fixed angle to the true wind — as the wind shifts, your boat turns with it, which is usually what a real navigator wants on a long leg.

Course changes are staged: as you adjust the dial the projected course preview updates live, and nothing happens to the boat until you press Apply (or Cancel to discard).

Planning ahead: maneuvers

You don't need to be online to sail well. Schedule maneuvers — course or TWA changes that fire at a set time — and the server executes them for you, even with your browser closed. Chain a few together and you've planned the whole night watch.

Reading the map

Your boat icon points to its heading (where the bow aims through the water). The dashed line is your course over ground — the path you'll actually travel once the ocean current has had its say. A red ⚠ on the projection marks where a course would run aground.

The Forecast panel animates wind or ocean currents directly on the globe, and the hour stepper scrubs the forecast up to 48 hours ahead — the same data your boat will sail on, so what you see is what you'll get.

Keyboard shortcuts (desktop)

KeyAction
← →Nudge heading by 1° (hold Shift for 5°)
SpaceTack / gybe — flips the wind to the other side at the same wind angle
LToggle True Wind Angle (TWA) lock
EnterApply the staged course
EscCancel the staged course

Races, time trials and ranking

  • Races are scheduled fleet events. Finishing positions feed an ELO rating — win against strong sailors and your rating climbs.
  • Time trials are permanent courses you can run whenever you like, as many times as you like. Only your best run counts on the course leaderboard, and they never touch your ELO — they're for record hunting.
  • Boat classes matter: an IMOCA and a Mini 6.50 sail very differently, each with its own polars and leaderboards.
⚠ Under active development. Features are still changing and bugs may occur. Thanks for testing — your patience and feedback are appreciated!

Race Calendar

A season calendar of scheduled fleet races will be published here — check the in-game Hub for currently open events in the meantime.

DateRaceClassStatus
The season calendar is being drafted — races will be announced here.

Under the Hood

A few notes on how the simulation actually works, because "real weather" gets claimed a lot and delivered rarely.

Live weather, not canned weather

Wind comes from NOAA's GFS model at full 0.25° resolution, updated every forecast cycle with a 48-hour horizon. The engine doesn't sail on a stale snapshot: it blends the forecast hours bracketing the current clock time, so the wind your boat feels is the wind valid right now — and it's the exact same field the forecast animation shows you on the globe.

Ocean currents

Surface currents come from the HYCOM ocean model, with its own hourly forecast timeline. Current doesn't just decorate the map — it's composed into your boat's motion, which is why your course over ground bends away from your heading in a strong tidal stream.

Real polar performance

Boat speed is looked up from polar diagrams — the same performance tables real racing teams use — as a function of true wind speed and angle. Each class (IMOCA, Mini 6.50) has its own polars, so sailing angles that pay on one boat may be slow on another.

A server-side ocean

The race engine runs continuously on the server. Your boat keeps sailing when you close the tab, scheduled maneuvers fire on time whether you're watching or not, and the coastline is enforced along your entire track each tick — there's no tunnelling through a headland between updates. If you hit land, you stop on the line.

Built solo. Offshore Racing is written and operated by one developer. If something looks broken, it probably is — tell me and it gets fixed.

Roadmap

Where the game is headed. Shipped items stay on the list so you can see the pace; plans can shift as testing feedback comes in.

  • ShippedPermanent time-trial courses with per-course record leaderboards and ghost-boat replays of the record run
  • ShippedMultiple boat classes (IMOCA, Mini 6.50) with class-specific polars and leaderboards
  • ShippedGPU wind and current particle animation on the globe
  • ShippedScheduled maneuver planning — your boat executes your plan while you sleep
  • ShippedAI-skippered boats to keep the fleets honest
  • BuildingiOS app
  • PlannedAnnual race calendar with scheduled season events
  • PlannedMore boat classes and more time-trial courses