Getting started

1 Create an account

1. Go to nordicstars.ai/app.
2. Choose the Create account tab — the panel opens on Sign in, so this is a real step.
3. Enter your Email and a Password of at least six characters, and press Create account. Or press Continue with Google and skip the password entirely.

We send a verification email, and you do not have to wait for it. There is no verification wall: you can create the organisation, add a boat, import and debrief straight away. A quiet line on the overview screen reminds you the link is there until you use it.

2 Create the organisation, and start the trial

The first thing a new account meets is First run. An organisation is your team’s home — boats, races and telemetry all live inside it, and people are invited into it.

1. Type your team’s name into Organization name.
2. Press Create organization.

Joining a team that already exists? Do not create an organisation. Ask an admin for an invite link instead, and go to section 7.

A small spelling note, so a step never looks wrong: the product app writes Organization where this documentation writes organisation. The button really does say Create organization.

3 Find your way around

Seven entries across the top, in this order: Overview, Boats, Import, Debrief, Tracking data, Overlays, Channels. On a phone they live behind the menu button.

Three of them can carry a small padlock — Import, Debrief and Tracking data. A padlocked entry is not hidden and does not do nothing: it takes you to Billing, and its tooltip says what would unlock it. That is deliberate. You should be able to see what the product has before you decide to pay for it.

Two more places are behind your initials at the top right: Organization (people, roles, invites) and Billing. That menu is also where you switch organisations if you belong to more than one, and where Sign out lives.

4 Add the boat

Everything hangs off a boat: telemetry, polars, targets, calibration, sails and coverage. Open Boats and use Add a boat.

1. Boat name — what the crew calls the boat.
2. Class — grouped by price band, each option showing the day, month and year price for that band.
3. Sail no. — optional, and worth filling in.
4. LOA (m) — optional. Leave it blank and the boat takes the length of its class; the greyed figure in the field is the value it would get. Set it only when the boat differs from its class. The field is metres, with the feet reading beside it as you type.
5. Draft (m) — optional, metres, with the same feet reading beside it. Leave it blank and the boat falls back to a platform default; the greyed figure in the field is that fallback and not, as with LOA, a preview of what its class carries — no class carries a draft. So this is worth a minute on a boat with a shoal keel or a deep one, where the default is wrong.
6. Press Add boat.

Why the draft is asked for at all. Checking a route against the depth under the boat has to compare that depth with something, and that something is a fact about the hull rather than about a race. Nothing in the product computes with it today — it is on file so that it is right when it is read, rather than typed in a hurry the week somebody needs it.

See pricing for the bands and what falls into each. The trial covers this boat from the moment it exists, so you can carry straight on.

Once a boat is in the list, its row ends with six links you will use later: Polar, Targets, Calibration, Sails, Race plans and Weather. That row is the only way into any of them.

5 Import a day of sailing

Open Import, pick the boat, pick the card that matches your file, and drop the file on the box. Hashing, uploading and the preview run on their own; read the preview, then press Commit import.

The full walk-through — the four formats, the venue-timezone step Expedition events need, the channel mapping and what the statuses mean — is Importing telemetry.

Nothing here is filed by hand. Races, days and regattas are derived from the guns and warnings in what you imported, so the regatta simply appears once the import completes.

6 Open the first debrief

1. Open Debrief. With more than one boat, pick yours from the selector beside the heading.
2. Choose the regatta the import produced.
3. Choose a race from a day’s list. That opens the player.
4. Press Space and watch it back. Click anywhere on the scrubber to jump; the marks along it are the guns, sail changes and other events from the import.

From there the player has more in it — The debrief player covers the timeline, the keyboard, the Explorer, the tuning guide and deep links, and Local video and media covers putting your onboard footage beside it.

7 Get the crew in

A debrief is better with the trimmers in the room. Open Organization from the menu behind your initials and scroll to Invites.

1. Type their Email.
2. Pick a Role — admin, member or viewer. Section 8 lists what each one can do. It defaults to member.
3. Press Invite.

They get an email with a link. You also get the same link on screen, once, with a Copy button beside it — useful when you would rather send it yourself. It is shown only that once.

What they see when they open it: the organisation, the role you chose, and the invited address masked — first letter, dots, full domain. They type the full address themselves, then set a password or continue with Google, and they are in. The mask is not decoration: the link is a bearer token, and printing the address on a public page would hand whoever found the link the identity to assume.

Invites are single-use, expire, and can be revoked from the pending list at any time. There is no separate email-verification step for an invitee — the link was delivered to their mailbox, which is the proof of the address.

8 What each role can do

Four roles. Everyone reads everything — boats, races, telemetry, tuning tables, the sails log. The differences are all about writing.

Two things the table cannot say on its own. Owner cannot be invited: it is granted afterwards, by an existing owner, and an organisation always keeps at least one — the last owner can neither be demoted nor removed. And an admin may change roles among admin, member and viewer, but never touch an owner’s row.

Most of the crew are members. That is the role that can import, keep the log and work with media, without being able to change the boat’s configuration or the team’s money. Viewer is for someone who should read the debrief and nothing else.

9 When the trial ends

Coverage is bought per boat, on Billing. Each boat gets a row with three period pills — Day, Month and Year, with the price for your class on each — and a Buy button. Month is preselected. A day pass covers 24 hours; month and year renew until you cancel.

Coverage can take a moment to appear after a payment, and that is not a failed purchase. Stripe sends you back to the billing page as soon as the payment goes through, and confirms the purchase to Nordic Stars separately — so the return can arrive first. The page says the payment was received and offers Refresh coverage; press it after a few seconds if the boat’s row still reads as uncovered.

Everything you set up stays exactly where it is when coverage lapses. Telemetry upload and the debrief player lock; boats, tuning, the sails log and your import history do not. Open billing portal is where payment methods, invoices and cancellations live.

Two things sit outside the per-boat passes and are enabled per organisation: Race Control, the tablet app, and fleet tracking data for events with official tracking. Both start with an email to support@nordicstars.ai.

10 Where to go next

• Polars and targets — the boat’s own numbers. Do this before you expect the player to grade anything.
• Calibration in practice — if the masthead is a few degrees out, everything downstream is too.
• The sails log — the wardrobe, and where the hours go.
• The math — how any number you are looking at was computed.