Sail Tactics

Sail Tactics began as a curious research project to see if Mike Dvorak could forecast the complex winds of the San Francisco Bay during the 2013 America’s Cup. At the time, he was simulating strong downslope windstorms in the Rocky Mountains for his postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. He honed his modeling system to simulate the terrain of the Golden Gate and was amazed to find how well his forecasting system worked for the high-tech America’s Cup sailboats. Dvorak began getting forecast feedback by working with the American Youth Sailing Force (a competitor in the Redbull Youth America’s Cup) and hundreds of users who subscribed to his email forecast, sent out before large weekend races. Eventually demand necessitated automation of much of the forecasting process, and Sail Tactics became a subscription based forecasting service in March 2014. In January 2015, we launched a world-class tidal current forecast system designed by Rusty Holleman, a former America’s Cup tide forecaster, University of California, Berkeley PhD graduate, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute postdoctoral researcher. The value of Sail Tactics daily ultra-high resolution forecast is evidenced by the fact that Our subscribers are the consistent frontrunners in major regattas.