Nordic Stars at a glance
The product in short facts, each with a link to the page that covers it in full.
What Nordic Stars is
Nordic Stars is navigation, start and debrief software for racing yachts. A race is planned and routed in a web browser, sailed with Race Control on an Android tablet aboard, and replayed and measured ashore against the boat’s own telemetry, the crew’s video and the fleet’s tracking data.
It is made for the people who run a racing boat’s programme: the navigator, the tactician, the coach and whoever analyses the boat’s performance.
The parts of the product
| Part | What it does | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Navigation | Draw the course ashore with the forecast and the depth on the chart, route it in the browser, and load it on the boat with no signal. | The Navigation section in the web app, and NAVIGATION and PATH AHEAD on the tablet |
| Race Control | The Android app at the helm: the line, the sequence, the course and the boat’s own numbers, with an uplink that streams the day as you sail. | Any Android tablet used for navigation |
| Debrief Player | Every race on one clock — the instruments, the events, your own video and the fleet — with any moment deep-linkable. | The player at /app/debrief |
| Data Analytics | Open any channel the boat logged, compare several on one chart, and read every moment against the boat’s own targets. | The Explorer and Tuning windows in the player, and the boat’s polar, targets, calibration and channels |
| Performance Reports | The day, its manoeuvres, the start and the race legs as documents: every number against the boat’s own reference, with that reference printed on the page. | Reports in the web app |
Where it runs
- The web app runs in a web browser at nordicstars.ai/app, with nothing to install. Race planning, routing, the weather viewer, the debrief player, the analytics and the reports all run there. Routing runs in the browser itself, on the same routing library the tablet runs, so the browser and the tablet return the same numbers for the same request.
- Race Control is an Android app, for any Android tablet used for navigation. It is not available for iPad or iPhone. No hardware is sold with it: it reads the instruments already on the boat.
- Race Control works with no mobile signal. The start, the course, the alarms and the routing run on the tablet, and the telemetry is buffered there and sent when the link returns. The plan, the forecast, the sea model and the chart are loaded at the dock.
Instruments and files it reads
| Source | What is read | Read by |
|---|---|---|
| FaRo | The instrument data, live over UDP. | Race Control |
| Exocet | Every variable the Exocet exports, live over the Exocet’s own protocol. Race Control sends its own computed values back to the Exocet for the boat’s displays. | Race Control |
| NMEA 0183 | Live over TCP or UDP, from any source that puts NMEA 0183 on the boat’s network — including a B&G H5000 or Hercules through a multiplexer, or an NMEA 2000 bus through a converting gateway. A recorded sentence log (.log, .txt, .nmea) is imported as a file. | Race Control; the web app for the log file |
| NMEA 2000 | A Yacht Devices YDVR recorder’s data folder as a .zip, or a single .DAT, including the B&G performance values: target boat speed, target wind angle, VMG and distance to the start line. | The web app |
| Vakaros | Atlas recordings as .vkx or the Vakaros Connect CSV export. | The web app |
| Expedition | Race logs (.csv) with their event files, polar tables, and the three CAL tables — acceleration, rate of turn and braking — which Race Control charges to every routed path. | The web app |
| Polars and targets | A polar as .pol, an Expedition table or VPP output; tuning targets from a CSV file. | The web app |
| GPX | Routes and marks, into a race plan or the marks list. Race plans also export as GPX. | The web app |
| GRIB | A GRIB file you download yourself. | Race Control |
| Video, photos and audio | Files on your own computer, played locally and never uploaded; YouTube videos by link. | The debrief player |
| Fleet tracking | GEORACING event tracking, with your own provider credentials. | The debrief player |
Forecasts, depth, currents and charts
- Weather models: ECMWF IFS, ECMWF AIFS, GFS from NOAA, ICON from DWD and AROME from Météo-France. Up to four per boat, each fetched on its own run schedule and clipped to a corridor around the route. The weather guide states each model’s own limits.
- Depth is built from public bathymetry: NOAA BlueTopo and NOAA’s coastal relief model over US waters, LINZ over New Zealand, GMRT, EMODnet over Europe, AusSeabed over Australia, and GEBCO as the global fallback.
- Currents come from NOAA coastal forecast systems over US waters and the Great Lakes, Copernicus Marine regional products, and the Copernicus global product: one model per corridor, the finest one that covers all of it. Tide height is added separately.
- Charts: the platform’s own chart covers the world and is drawn by default, built from OpenStreetMap seamarks and public bathymetry. In the browser, official raster charts are available for Norway (Kartverket) and the United States (NOAA), off by default. On the tablet, the official tier covers the United States: NOAA’s vector ENC cells, repacked for the race area. Swedish, Finnish and Danish official charts are not available. The Navigation page covers each chart tier in full.
Your data
- The service runs in the EU, in Google Cloud’s europe-north1 region in Finland. The privacy policy lists every subprocessor and where it runs.
- Onboard video is played locally and never uploaded. Only a fingerprint of each file and its alignment offset are stored.
- An instrument correction never changes the stored data. A calibration entry is applied when the data is read, and deleting the entry returns every reading to what was recorded.
- Reports export as PDF, and race plans export as GPX.
What it does not do
- A computed route is a planning result, not a passage plan. The ship’s plotter stays the navigator’s authority.
- Nothing on the platform steers a boat: no autopilot, no steering output.
- The chart on the tablet, the official tier included, is a repacked extract: it is not an official ENC and does not meet chart carriage regulations.
- Race Control reads an NMEA 2000 bus only through a gateway that converts it to NMEA 0183.
- The corrected-time calculator (IRC, ORC, PHRF and SRS) reads no certificate and applies no sailing instruction, so it is not a scorer.
Who makes it
Nordic Stars is made by Goose Yard Sailing AB, a Swedish limited company (aktiebolag), company number 559489-8594. Support: support@nordicstars.ai. The terms, the privacy policy and the other agreements are under Legal.
More detail
- Getting started — from a new account to the first debrief.
- Guides — each part of the product, step by step.
- The math — how each computed number is computed.
- Blog — one topic a week, worked through in full.