Skip to content

Privacy Policy

Last updated 12 August 2026

The short version: your sailing data never leaves your boat — unless you deliberately choose to share some of it, either with your sail loft or coach, or with the fleet wind pool. Both are off until you switch them on, both are described in full below, and both stay under your control. SailTac runs on your own computer. We hold the small amount of information needed to sell you a license and email you a key, and nothing else.

What we hold

  • Your email address — to send your license key, renewals, and occasional messages about the product.
  • Your boat name — because license keys are issued against it.
  • Your subscription record — which tier, when it renews, and the license key we issued. This is held in our payment processor's systems.
  • How many computers your key is installed on — a count, plus an anonymous code per computer. It comes from the licence check-in described below, and it exists so we can tell whether a key is being shared. It can't be turned back into a machine, a person or a location.
  • Which version of SailTac you're running — so we can tell you when you're several releases behind, and warn you if your copy is one that can't update itself. It's stored against a one-way hash of your key, not against your name.
  • Anything you email us — support threads, feedback, and the like.
  • Anonymous visit statistics for this website — which pages were viewed, and which site sent you here. Collected by Vercel, who host this site. No cookies, no fingerprinting, and nothing that identifies you or follows you to other sites. It tells us that a pricing page was read, never who read it.

What we don't hold

  • Your instrument data, GPS positions, race logs, tracks, polars, sail inventory, crew names or helm statistics. All of it is written to your own machine and we have no access to it — with the single exception of whatever you deliberately switch on in the two sharing sections below, and then only what those sections describe.
  • Your payment card details. Those go directly to Stripe and never touch our systems.
  • Any tracking or advertising profile of you. This site has no advertising trackers, sets no analytics cookies, and nothing here follows you to other websites. The visit statistics described above are counted, not attributed to a person.

Who processes data for us

  • Stripe — payments, subscriptions and billing records. Stripe also works out and collects any sales tax or VAT due on your purchase, and holds the record of your license key.
  • Resend — sending your license key and account emails.
  • Vercel — hosting this website.
  • Cloudflare — serving the installer download.

Each holds only what it needs to do its job. We don't sell or rent your information to anyone, ever.

What the app talks to

When you ask it to, SailTac fetches public weather forecasts and public map tiles from third-party services, and checks a public race-tracking feed if you use fleet tracking. Those requests go directly from your computer to those services — they don't pass through us, and we don't see them. The rest of the time the app makes no outbound connections at all.

There are two things the app sends us, and we'd rather you read them here than discover them in a firewall log.

The licence check-in. About once a week, if your computer has internet, SailTac sends us your license key, the version it's running, and an anonymous code identifying the computer it's installed on. It lets us see whether a key is being shared across a fleet. It carries no boat data, no positions, no race logs and nothing about your sailing.

The update check. Every few hours, and whenever you press Check for updates, the app asks us whether a newer version exists. That question has to include your key and the version you're on, because the answer depends on both. We keep the answer to the second part: it's how we know which boats are behind, and in particular which ones are on a build too old to update itself and need to be told to reinstall.

Both are stored against a one-way hash of your key. Neither has any effect on whether the app runs. License keys are verified entirely offline on your own machine, and SailTac works indefinitely with no internet connection at all — a boat that never checks in is never treated differently, it just won't hear from us about updates. Beyond these two, the app sends us nothing: no usage statistics, no crash reports, no telemetry.

Sharing with your sail loft — optional, and yours to switch off

If your sailmaker or coach uses SailTac Custom, you can choose to share some of your data with them. Nothing is shared unless you enter their code in SailTac's Settings and tick what to send — and each category is a separate choice:

  • Sails — your sail inventory and usage records: hours, wind exposure, load, and per-race performance aggregates for each sail. This is what lets a loft service your sails from evidence.
  • Races — race summaries: results, speeds, performance figures, and for recent races the second-by-second trace of speed and wind that draws the charts. Crew and helm names you entered appear in these summaries. Positions do not — every field recording where the boat went is removed on your computer before anything is sent, and stripped again on arrival.
  • Race tracks — where the boat actually went, race by race. This is its own separate tick, never included in the one above, because it is the most revealing thing a racing boat has: a coach reading your tracks can see every tactical choice you made. When it is on, the GPS track of your most recent races is shared, and you can hold back any single race from the Races page without affecting anything else about it. When it is off, no position of any kind leaves the boat for your loft.
  • Passages — a count of passages and total hours. Never the tracks themselves.

Shared data is stored in private storage, visible only to the loft you chose, is transferred over the same channel as the licence check-in, and is never sold, aggregated across lofts, or used for anything except showing that loft your boat's record.

Unticking takes the copy back. Untick a category — or clear the loft code, which stops everything — and the boat's next sync tells the portal to delete what it holds for that category. Press “Sync now” in Settings and it happens straight away; leave it and the daily sync does it. Until that sync goes through, your loft still has the copy they were already sent, and the app says so on the sharing panel rather than letting you assume otherwise. If your boat will not be online again, email us and we'll delete it for you.

Sharing wind with the fleet — optional, and yours to delete

There are almost no wind measurements over the water where people race. The weather services have buoys well offshore and stations ashore, and on lakes like St Clair essentially nothing in between — so boats are the only instruments out there. If enough of them contribute what they measured, SailTac can work out which forecast models are reliable on a given piece of water. One boat cannot do that alone, however many seasons it sails.

This is off unless you switch it on in Settings. When it is on, then after a race has finished, SailTac sends one line per hour of that race:

  • the average wind speed and direction your instruments measured during that hour, and the average position the boat held;
  • what each weather model had forecast for that same hour and place, which is what makes models comparable between boats;
  • an anonymous code for the computer, so two machines sharing one licence can be told apart.

What is never sent:your track — one averaged point per hour is not a trace of where you sailed; anything at all during a race, because live wind and position is tactical information and uploads wait for the finish; your boat's name inside the data, which is removed on your computer and removed again on arrival; and nothing from the race report — no crew, helm, results or sail choices. Simulated and replayed races are never shared either.

It is stored in private storage under a one-way hash of your licence key, never the key itself, and is used only to measure forecast accuracy and to build the record of which models to trust in which waters. It is not sold. Switch it off and future uploads stop; the Delete what I have shared button in the same panel removes everything this boat has ever contributed, without asking us.

Cookies

This site sets no analytics or advertising cookies. That isn't a technicality hiding something: the visit statistics described above are measured without cookies at all, which is why you were never shown a cookie banner. Stripe's hosted checkout sets its own cookies as part of processing your payment and preventing fraud — those are governed by Stripe's privacy policy.

How long we keep things

We keep subscription and billing records for as long as we're required to for tax and accounting purposes. Support email is kept while it's useful. If you ask us to delete your details we'll do it, except where we're legally required to retain a record of a transaction.

Your rights

You can ask us what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for a copy, or ask us to delete it. Email scott@sailtacperformance.comand we'll respond — depending on where you live you may have these rights under the GDPR, UK GDPR, or state privacy laws, and we apply them to everyone regardless.

Where your information is held

We're based in the United States and our providers store data there. If you're outside the US, buying from us means your contact and billing details are handled in the US, under contractual safeguards our providers offer for international transfers.

Children

SailTac isn't directed at children and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.

Changes

If this policy changes materially we'll email subscribers. The date at the top always reflects the current version.

Contact

SailTac — scott@sailtacperformance.com.