The Ships Log — Vol. I, No. 1 Faster by Numbers Thursday, 6 November 2026 — San Francisco
SailScan

A journal of sail shape, measured

Faster By Numbers with SailScan

Plate I. — Under main and headsail, draft stripes drawing in the breeze. Photogravure

From the field

SailScan reads your sail shape in the field and in real time.

Reads any sail from an optimist to a super maxi — Mainsails and headsails — Port or starboard tack. Use your mobile phone to analyze draft stripes for accurate camber, draft, entry, exit and twist data.

Where the old way demanded an evening at the chart table — photographs ferried ashore, curves traced by hand, numbers argued over cold coffee — SailScan performs the whole exercise before the next mark. A world-class computer vision model, trained on thousands of sails, finds each draft stripe and renders its verdict in seconds: depth, position, angle. Power and lift, accounted for while the breeze still holds.

How it works

Three movements, one measurement

I.

Take a photo

Take a photo with your phone and our computer vision model gets to work.

SailScan camera screen framing a mainsail
Fig. 1 — The sighting
II.

Read and measure

SailScan finds each draft stripe and traces the curve from luff to leach to compute sail shape parameters such as Camber (depth), Draft (position of max depth), and Twist (angle relative to the boom).

SailScan results screen with traced stripes and metrics
Fig. 2 — The reading
III.

Adjust and record

Make adjustments in real time. Save scans for later debrief, comparison, or reuse the same settings to increase sail speed and efficiency.

SailScan comparison screen of two saved scans
Fig. 3 — The record

Letters to the editor

We trimmed the main off SailScan numbers all weekend and found half a knot upwind.
— Tom R., J/111 tactician, San Francisco
The draft stripes read in seconds. What used to be an evening of photo markup is done before we hit the dock.
— Sofia M., sailmaker, Newport RI
Camber and twist on every tack, logged. It’s part of our debrief like the GPS track.
— Henrik L., coach, Aarhus DK
I’m a weekend racer, not an engineer. SailScan tells me what to ease and when.
— Dana K., Santa Cruz 27, Seattle

Carry the loft in your pocket

SailScan is on the water today. Download the edition for your device.

The Enterprise Desk

Welcome computer vision aboard

The SailScan VLM platform can be customized for your company, team, or coaching needs. Embed a powerful sail scanning and recommendation engine with outputs for sail design, team coaching, and recording into your workflow.

Enquire with the enterprise desk

About the publisher

Founded at the weather rail

SailScan LLC was founded by veteran racing professional Alex Higby to compute key aerodynamic metrics and make recommendations to optimize sail performance in the field. SailScan is built and maintained in San Francisco, CA by Seamaphore.

34th America’s Cup 52 Super Series Extreme Sailing Series