Life & fun · February 24, 2023
Sail a historical full-rigged ship in real global weather
This is a simulator of a frigate from about 1800. It has realistic physics, tuned to match historical performance. The UI is based around commands given in period naval language. Rather than use the current weather, it has a full year's weather data (for 1980 - taken from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis2.html). This allows the weather to change realistically under time acceleration. To learn the basics of handling a square-rigged ship, start the "Harbour" scenario, click on the instructions button at the bottom left, and follow the instructions…
In plain words
Sail is a historical frigate simulator set around 1800 with realistic physics and period-accurate naval mechanics. Players issue commands using authentic naval language to maneuver a full-rigged ship across global oceans. The simulator uses archived 1980 weather data that evolves realistically under time acceleration, enabling both short training scenarios in Portsmouth Harbour and long-distance voyages across the world. It's designed for anyone interested in historical sailing and maritime navigation.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
This is a simulator of a frigate from about 1800. It has realistic physics, tuned to match historical performance. The UI is based around commands given in period naval language. Rather than use the current weather, it has a full year's weather data (for 1980 - taken from https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis2.html). This allows the weather to change realistically under time acceleration. To learn the basics of handling a square-rigged ship, start the "Harbour" scenario, click on the instructions button at the bottom left, and follow the instructions to try to get out of Portsmouth harbour. To go for a long sail, start the "The World" scenario. Open the map, control+click anywhere on it to move there; control+click on the compass at the bottom left to turn the ship to that heading; then activate travel acceleration at the bottom right. It's a simulator more than a game - think MS flight simulator. There's no sinking, but you can lose sails or spars in high winds. It's windows only. This was released a couple of years ago, but this is an updated version from the end of January. See the devlog (https://thapen.itch.io/painted-ocean/devlog) for the changes. You can also find some discussions there on historical sailing performance numbers.
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