I knew it … pirates 
! ghost ships 
with no sailors 
looking forward to what you think about it, cause found not much favorable review on steam for the predecessor Sailaway. hopefully this second attempt ( or is it really third !? didnt find the second one on steam ) will be better.
I don’t want to turn this into a sailing thread (we need one), so will keep my review short. The comments above must be for SA 1/2, because SA 3 was released only a week ago and is not yet available on Steam. So, while many of the criticism hold true, quite a few have been fixed or improved upon in the latest version. I took Sailaway 3 for a two hour sail last night around my local harbor, Charleston, SC.
Concerning terrain, there still isn’t much to see. But I did find the channel markers to be accurate enough that I could navigate from memory of the area where I usually sail. The lights and geographical features, like a rock pile in the middle of Charleston harbor are there.
In the most manual sailing mode, you are supposed to be able to capsize. Have not tested this yet.
My main complaint is that Sailaway 3 is not VR capable and the viewing system is kludgy, especially for a VR user, who is used to moving head and eyes rather than a mouse. Try as I might, I struggled to get a view that I normally would have in the cockpit or other positions on the boat. The FOV is too tight IMO. Also, when I am sailing, I am constant looking around at the boat and environment, so the FOV and speed off head movement is critical. Not so much if you are just cruising in the open water, but it was aggravating at times while navigating a harbor.
Sailing is an interesting endeavor, because it is highly subjective and interactive. You are controlling a boat that is subject to changing wind and current flow. (Not only that, but often everyone seems to have a different opinion how to do it best.) For those reasons, I would say that it would be damn near impossible to learn how to sail via any PC simulation, save maybe in a full motion rig and a FFB tiller. The tiller, especially on small boats, is rarely set and forget. You are continuously providing steering input to account for changes in wind, current, crew weight and position, and sail controls.
A benefit for experienced sailors, most of the important sail controls are there, halyards, sheets, outhaul, cunningham, boom vang (kicker), reefing lines, and back stay. But how much they affect the boat’s performance remains to be seen. I do know that close hauled with main and jib trimmed in on an 11 kt wind did result in an appreciative amount of heel. I ran aground once while fiddling with the interface and was able to sail off. That was far better than calling for a tow and pulling out my debit card, no matter what the reviewer says.
So while I would say, especially to new sailors, caveat emptor, Sailaway 3 does one thing better than all of the other sailing sims. A feature that is certainly applicable to our Christmas trip, is provide sailing to most of the planet, with real-time weather and currents. Your progress continues, even when you log off. There were recent comments about how much data is tracked and as to its accuracy from the developer. He made a really good point that if he tracked all of the factors involved in a boat’s environment, given the weather, current, published, historical, and actual performance, with every metric available, he would need a SpaceX size computer to do this. But what he does track is enough for our purposes, IMHO.
There is an April '24 released VR sail racing sim called Marineverse Cup which looks very interesting, but not much use for the Christmas trip.
CORRECTIONS
FOV: Search the manual for “view angle” to set FOV. Default is 70.
True. I like to think of myself as a reasonably experienced sailor (I used to race a Paper Tiger catamaran) but I struggle with Hydofoil Generation. Sure, I have never tried a real racing foil, but it can’t be that hard IRL.
That’s what I thought about hydrofoils too.
Am an experienced sailor, windsurfer and was halfway with learning kiteboarding when gf and I decided we’d do wingfoiling.
Flying DCS: Mi-24 is a piece of cake compared to the unstable mess of a hydrofoil. And you can’t just press “restart”, you have to carry the whole unwieldy thing upwind again after each try.
Foiling can be that hard IRL. Really unbelievably hard. Now maybe boats are more stable than standing up on a board so I’m not sure it’s the same.
Looks like quite a competition for first place … up North or down South, what will it be?
I got the Condor for FS2020, will have to do some test flight(s) and see if I utillize this airliner of old for this years trek.
Looks like New Zealand it is?
I think I will take it where I left it after the 2023 edition - in Daocheng, China. This way the trip will be cut to bearable 6000 nm 
We got about 23 more hours to vote. Once we get to that 1200 Zulu mark tomorrow. Ill close the poll and the destination will be set.
Didn’t realize there was so many flights.
So the Poll is now closed.
And the winner is…ENSB
So ENSB is the destination for this years Christmas Flight
Genius!
And don’t forget…
