New Vessel Polars in LightHouse

With the latest release of our LightHouse Operating System, we now have 500+ sets of Polar Performance Data for popular sailing hulls. If your hull is preloaded, simply choose your yachts make and model and enjoy the advanced features polar performance data enables, such as tack angles to achieve optimum VMG upwind and downwind, time, and distance to tack, and the percentage of polar boat speed being achieved.

If you don’t see your boat’s polar information preloaded in LightHouse and you would like to benefit from our advanced sailing features, simply complete the form below, and we’ll endeavor to make your polar data available in a future LightHouse Operating System release.

The Information We Need

In order to benefit from our advanced sailing features, we need your vessels Polar data. A polar diagram describes how fast a sailing boat may go at different wind speeds (TWS) and in different angles to the wind (TWA). Every type of boat has its polar diagram (or VPP, velocity prediction program), computed from hull shape, weight, rigging, and a sail setup. Raymarine uses this polar information to calculate the fastest choice of path for the current wind speed and direction.  

For inclusion in LightHouse we need the polar to be provided in text format (.txt) as per this example data sheet . Please note that we can not accept polar diagrams, pdf’s or photos. Your submission has to be editable text.

Polar data can be sourced from many locations; the boat manufacturer (which is our preferred source), a class association or members forum, a rating certificate, or put together by the owner if a very old hull design or a one-off boat.

It’s also essential to capture as much information as possible about the polar data provided and the vessel it relates to, that is the reason for the form. For example, two polars for the same boat can be very different depending on whether one included the use of a spinnaker and the other doesn’t. The same goes for short and deep draft keels and racing or cruising mast configurations. We need to capture this information with the polar submission.

Boat Polars Preloaded into the LightHouse OS

The latest list of Boat Polars preloaded in the LightHouse operating system can be found here.