Post-session analysis · iPad & iPhone

Your sailing performance
in exacting detail

VMGenie turns the GPS track from your Vakaros or Waterspeed into the story of your race or training session — your speed painted on the map, every tack and gybe automatically found and costed in metres, and the wind direction inferred from your own sailing. Built for any dinghy or small-keelboat class, with all the Olympic sailing classes already set up.

Join the TestFlight beta See what it does
VMGenie showing a dinghy mid-track over satellite imagery: its trail coloured by speed, a starboard-tack marker ahead, wind arrows across the water, and the live SOG, VMG and COG read out in the corner.

Why VMGenie

You've sailed the session. Now find the seconds you left on the water

If you race or train with a Vakaros GPS or an Apple Watch running Waterspeed, VMGenie is the analysis tool for afterwards. It reads the track your device recorded and shows you what actually happened out there: where you were fast, where the wind and tide were, and exactly what each tack and gybe cost you.

6Olympic classes tuned in, from ILCA to Formula Kite
Fullresolution — every point your device recorded, kept and scrubbed frame by frame

See it in action

What your track has to tell you

Real screens from a session on the water — a Waterspeed track, imported and analysed.

VMGenie showing a full session: the track coloured by speed with tacks, gybes and marks labelled, and SOG, VMG and COG read out in the corner.

The complete session, with manoeuvres automatically classified

Import the track and VMGenie lays out the entire session — every leg coloured by speed, with tacks, gybes, marks, starts and finishes found and labelled automatically. Tap anywhere for the SOG, VMG and COG at that instant, with the wind drawn across the course.

Select a stretch, read the averages

Drag out any part of the track — a beat, a run, a single leg between two marks — and get its average SOG, VMG and COG. The quick way to compare one side of the course against the other, or one lap against the next.

A stretch of the track highlighted in pink, with its average SOG, VMG and COG shown for the selected segment.
A tack analysis chart: boat speed and VMG plotted second by second through the turn, with the metres lost and gained headlined.

Every tack and gybe, measured

Open a manoeuvre to see boat speed and VMG through the turn, second by second either side of the apex. VMGenie headlines the metres you lost — or, on a favourable shift or a helpful tide, the metres you gained.

What it does

See your race unfold, tack by tack

Your track on the map

The whole race drawn as a speed-coloured line over Apple Maps or satellite imagery. Zoom, pan and rotate — north-up or aligned to the wind.

Inspect any point

Tap the track or scrub the timeline for the time, SOG, VMG, COG, heading and heel at that moment. Select a stretch and get its averages instead.

Scrub & replay

A timeline scrubber with a boat that moves along your track as it plays. Play back at 1× to 60×, step frame by frame, and crop to just the part that matters.

Every tack & gybe, costed

Manoeuvres are found automatically and marked on the map. Tap one for a speed-and-VMG chart through the turn and the metres you lost — or gained.

Wind from your sailing

VMGenie reads the wind direction from your own upwind work and draws it on the map — or cross-checks it against a historical weather archive. Set it by hand any time.

Current, revealed

By comparing your speed, magnetic heading and course over the ground on opposite tacks, VMGenie estimates the tidal set across the course and shows it as arrows — no station tables to enter.

Tuned to your class

Detection thresholds and the on-screen boat are set per class — ILCA, 470, 49er, Nacra 17, iQFoil, Formula Kite — so a foiler's speeds aren't mistaken for noise.

Correct it yourself

Disagree with a detected tack, or want to add one it missed? Adjust or add manoeuvres by hand — your corrections are saved with the session and sync across devices.

Tuned for your class

Presets built around how each boat actually moves

Outlier gates, tack and gybe thresholds and manoeuvre windows are set per class — so a 35-knot kite spike isn't discarded as noise, and a deep-running gybe isn't missed. Override anything per session.

  • ILCA
  • 470
  • 49er
  • Nacra 17
  • iQFoil
  • Formula Kite
  • + customisable settings for your favourite dinghy or small keelboat class

How it works

Three steps from file to insight

  1. 1

    Import your track

    Open a Vakaros Atlas 2 .vkx, or a GPX / CSV export from Waterspeed or Vakaros Connect. Duplicate-safe, with progress and a clear warning if any rows can't be read.

  2. 2

    Set the scene

    Pick your boat class and let VMGenie infer the wind direction and current from your sailing — or set the wind yourself. Crop the track down to the legs you want to study.

  3. 3

    Find the seconds

    Scrub and replay the race, open each tack and gybe to see what it cost, and read your speed and VMG at any point. Change the wind and every figure updates.

iCloud sync

Your sessions, on all your devices

Import a track on one device and it's there on the others. VMGenie keeps your tracks and settings in your own iCloud, in sync across your iPhone and iPad — with no separate account to create — and everything still works offline when you're away from a signal.

  • In sync, automatically. Your whole library follows you from device to device — nothing to set up.
  • Works offline. Everything runs on-device; away from a signal, nothing stops working.

Follow along with VMGenie

VMGenie is in active development, heading for a TestFlight beta on iOS 18 and later. Leave your email and I'll keep you posted.

Requires an iPhone or iPad on iOS 18+, or a Mac with Apple silicon.

About the author

Dr Andrew Mason

Naval architect · machine-learning engineer · sailor

VMGenie is built by Dr Andrew Mason, who has spent his career at the intersection of boat design, data science and sailing performance. He is the original author of Maxsurf — the naval-architecture software used to design marine vessels the world over — which he created and led at FormSys for more than two decades.

He applied machine learning to hull-shape optimisation for two winning America's Cup campaigns — Alinghi (2007) and Oracle Team USA, whose USA 17 took the 2013 Cup — work underpinned by his PhD, Stochastic Optimisation of America's Cup Class Yachts. He later spent five years as a machine-learning researcher at Apple, working on virtual reality for the Apple Vision Pro project.

On the water

Andrew has been racing since he was twelve, when he started out in the Cherub class, and went on through Lightweight Sharpies, Fireballs, 470s and the Flying Dutchman. He spent five years in the Laser — now the Olympic ILCA 7 — racing in State, National and Pacific championships as well as in multiple European, Dutch Open, North American and World Championships. In 1980 he took up windsurf speedsailing, competing at five consecutive Weymouth Speed Weeks and holding national speed records several times over. He still races the ILCA 7 in the Great Grand Master division, and wingfoils for the fun of it.