Every release of the SkipperCheck COLREG and ship-handling simulator, newest first: what changed, in plain words, and a link that opens it straight in the simulator.
Rivers now flow: the Daugava, Lielupe, Salaca and Pärnu (and the Neva, Krka and Cetina) carry you downstream, stronger in the narrows and fading in a plume past the moles, by the month's typical discharge. Offshore a wind-driven current builds over hours. A CURRENT tile shows the set and rate; tap it to set your own or switch it off. In Croatia it also shows the small Adriatic tide.
An instructor opens a private class with a short code; students join from any browser and sail in their own private sea. The instructor sees every boat live, can pause the class, send messages, bring in fog, a wind shift or an engine failure, and ends with a summary table.
A new vessel, LOTE, a 24 m hydrographic survey catamaran with two azimuth thrusters and a multibeam echosounder, whose AUTO TRACK holds her on a survey line at a set speed. ≋ SURVEY opens eight exercises off Jūrmala and in Kaštela Bay: lines on AUTO TRACK and by hand, the racetrack turn, coverage and overlap, and a sound-velocity cast held on station.
Connect a gamepad, a flight stick, a yoke or a throttle quadrant and press any button: the layout follows the boat, from wheel and lever or twin levers to a joystick, the sails or the sea plane's yoke. CONTROLLER (beside SOUND) shows what each stick and button does, with calibration and remapping kept in this browser, and the keyboard, mouse and touch keep working alongside.
An hour before the gun the race committee lays the daily Riga – Skulte – Riga course to the race's own wind: a start line square to it, a windward mark a mile upwind, then Skulte, and a finish line square to the leg home. The lobby shows the course as it is laid.
AREA → CROATIA · CENTRAL DALMATIA: Split, Trogir, Šolta, Brač, Hvar and the Pakleni islands, Vis and the Makarska riviera, with 174 harbours, coves and buoy fields, ferries on their real routes and the area's real forecast wind. With a simulator plan you start inside a harbour on the detailed chart and can dock there; without one you start at the harbour's approach.
Two new vessels: a 28 m harbour tug with two azimuth stern drives and winches, and an 18 m push tug with flanking rudders. Towlines sag, stretch and part at their weakest point, and a line leading abeam can pull a tug over. ⛓ TOWING has six exercises, from a disabled yacht to escorting and braking a tanker.
✎ SCENARIO sets up an exercise of your own: the place, your vessel, the time and the weather, other vessels with their orders and routes, and triggers that start, stop or turn them. Run it, take any vessel's helm, save it and share it by link; everything stays in your browser.
⚑ DISTRESS shows the Annex IV signals in training (flares, smoke, flags, SOS by lamp and horn), always marked TRAINING, also for other skippers in the shared sea. Four drills put a vessel in distress near you: sight her, report what she showed, relay the MAYDAY and stand by; a guide explains each signal.
Modules 5 and 6 are complete (pile boxes, the lasso, a harbour after dark, a catamaran stern-to and a charter check-out run), and Module 7 adds power and ship handling: twin levers on a motor yacht, a crash stop on a tanker, the tanker with tugs and the cruise ship's pods. That makes 34 lessons in seven modules: practice for the ambitious, not a professional qualification.
▤ POSTER shows a vessel's manoeuvring data the way a ship's wheelhouse poster does: turning circles, stopping distances, the propeller's effect, the thrusters and the speed for each engine order. The figures are measured on the simulator's own physics, so they match how she handles here, and any other vessel can be picked to compare.
The simulator has sound, all made in the browser from the simulation itself: her engines and thrusters, wind and rigging, the water along her, the harbour, and the fog signals of ships around you in restricted visibility. SOUND SIGNALS on the helm sounds the whistle and the Rule 34 signals, and SOUND (bottom right of the 3-D view) sets the volume or turns it off.
A 16.5 m pilot launch with a heavy collar fender, and ⚑ PILOT with transfer drills: put the pilot aboard a tanker, a bulk carrier or a container ship under way, or take him off, by day or night, in a calm, moderate or rough sea. The ship's own pressure field pushes and pulls you alongside, so the approach from astern on her lee side matters.
🛟 MOB (Shift+O) marks the position on the chart and the radar, puts the dan buoy over and starts the MOB clock. DRILLS runs the recovery methods that fit each boat (the figure-eight, quick-stop and deep beam reach under sail, a direct return under power, the Williamson, Anderson and Scharnow turns for ships) by day or night, scored out of 100.
Two working vessels, an 80 m platform supply vessel with a joystick and a simple dynamic positioning, and a 26 m crew transfer catamaran, at Baltic offshore platforms, a wind farm and a training platform in the Gulf of Riga, each with its lights, fog signal and 500 m safety zone. ⛽ OFFSHORE has ten exercises, from the call before entering the zone to cargo lifts on DP and push-on transfers at a turbine.
Tap a WIND readout and switch from REAL, the live forecast, to SET: pick the direction, 0 to 35 knots, light or strong gusts and a steady or veering wind, then practise docking or sailing in exactly that. Other skippers in the shared sea see that you are on a practice wind.
Every bow and stern thruster now has the force of a real installation for that vessel, taken from the makers' published data: weaker than before on the 15 m motor yacht and the B.Yond 40M, stronger on the tanker and the cruise ship. Boats that have no thrusters in real life have none here either.
The ground in the 3-D view now follows the chart's water closely, so narrow city waterways and harbour basins you can sail on the chart are open water in 3-D too, and no land shows where the chart has water.
A reload, a crash or a dropped phone no longer ends your race: open the simulator again within 10 minutes and REJOIN THE RACE puts your boat back where the server last had her. % POLAR on the race panel compares your speed with ELEONORA's speed table, measured on the simulator's own physics.
⛵ REGATTA (with a free account) races real skippers in identical ELEONORAs: a daily Riga – Skulte – Riga race with the gun at 19:00 Riga time at ×10, time trials against ghosts whenever you like, and races of your own with an invite link. The 3-D view draws the committee boat and its flags, the marks, the line and the other boats' sail numbers.
VESSEL → SEA PLANE: taxi with the water rudders, take off over the hump onto the step, fly, and land on the water. On the water she is a vessel under the COLREGs that keeps well clear of others, with lights as near as practicable to a power-driven vessel's.
Every harbour in the Gulf of Riga and round the Baltic now has empty berths of each kind its water can take: finger berths, stern buoys, Med slots with lazy lines, alongside berths, pile boxes and mooring buoys, in the mix local practice uses. Bow and stern lines and springs can go from either side.
Stopped or at a crawl the wind now blows her off the way her shape says: a sailing yacht's bow falls off first, a motor yacht's stern. Going astern the screw kicks her stern, twin screws split ahead and astern turn her on the spot, and the thrusters spool up and fade with speed; under way and under sail she handles as before.
On the big ships the bridge view opens out to 140° across, you can step out onto the bridge wings and LOOK AFT, and the consoles are live. The glass-bridge layout puts the radar, the chart and the controls into the bridge's own screens, so the view has the whole window.
Docking mode now draws the forces on her in its own quiet chart style: small bubbles where the thrusters and the propeller throw their wash, the wind's arrow with its gusts, and the way she is drifting.
At night her own sidelights, sternlight and masthead light now light her deck, sails and rails and shine on the water, each only within its own arc, so what you see depends on where you look from.
The harbour picker offers each vessel only the harbours she fits (a harbour may be too big, never too small), and changing to a bigger vessel inside a small harbour moves her out to water that takes her hull.
Open the 3-D view, the docking plan, the radar, the chart or the instruments in a window of its own and put it full screen on a TV, a second monitor or a projector, while the controls stay on your computer.
The compass, COG, radar and docking plan now agree with the real chart anywhere in the Baltic: true north within 0.05°, where it had been up to 11° out in the west. The wind and weather are MET Norway's forecast for where she is, blended from sea points around her.
TIME shows green and steady at ×1, orange at ×10 and red at ×100. The autopilot has −90° and +90° for a quarter turn, and ⚓ DOCK blinks once she is inside a harbour.
Ten more docking lessons: bows-in and stern-in boxes and backing out of one, a crosswind box, a buoy under the bow and a bow-to with a stern buoy, rafting up, and stern-to on a lazy line, in a crosswind and on her own anchor.
With Marine Simulator Training or the Skipper Refresher Course the Baltic from the Gulf of Bothnia to Kiel, the Belts and the Kattegat streams in detail as you sail, and you can start inside, enter and dock in about 2,000 harbours. Without a plan the rest of the Baltic stays a coarse chart, with starts at each harbour's approach.
Nine more docking lessons: a first landing, the easy side and the hard side, wind setting you on and blowing you off, a gap just long enough, sideways on both thrusters, and leaving a berth with one line and the engine.
SkipperCheck's own docking course runs in docking mode: a briefing, short runs with a live score, stars and a debrief. Module 1, six lessons on how she carries her way, her stern, the rudder and the kick of the screw, is free.
Docking mode now shows the harbour as seen from the air, with CHART to switch back to the plain plan, and the harbours whose pontoons had been guessed are laid out again like real marinas: fingers, buoys, Med mooring and alongside berths, left empty for practice.
The harbour picker lists about 1,800 harbours round the whole Baltic, searchable by name or country, and starts her at the chosen harbour's approach, heading out to open water.
Past the Gulf of Riga the coasts and islands of the whole Baltic (Gotland, Öland, Bornholm, the Estonian islands, the archipelagos, the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia and the Danish straits) are now in the chart, the radar and the 3-D view, with the major lights.
On your own tanker and cruise ship the bridge view has a full wheelhouse: raked front windows with wipers that run in rain and snow, live radar, chart and conning screens, and a wheel, telegraph, pod levers and joystick that move with your orders.
Riga, Pärnu, Kuressaare, Ruhnu and the coast towns as seen from the water: landmarks modelled one by one, every building with its district's roofs and colours, and a skyline out to the horizon.
The new Online Sailing Simulator page describes sailing in Free Mode, and its Start sailing link puts you aboard ELEONORA off the Daugava mouth with the sails up and AUTO TRIM on.
AREA lists all 107 harbours of the Gulf of Riga by country, and picking one starts her stopped in its basin near the free berths. A link with ?area= opens the simulator in that harbour.
The docking plan is drawn like a pilot book's marina plan: clean and north up, with graded contacts, her navigation lights at night and the thrusters shown in colour. Depth no longer slows or stops her: the water is deep everywhere and only the shore stops her.
Two own vessels with big-ship handling: a 183 m product tanker on an engine telegraph (slow to start, slow to stop, prop walk going astern) and a 260 m cruise ship with two azipods and a joystick, both with tugs on key T. Free Mode traffic always has one of each, drawn in detail.
Docking mode became a to-scale, north-up harbour plan in which only she and the traffic move. She can lie in a finger berth, stern-to Mediterranean style on a lazy line, a buoy or her own anchor, on a mooring buoy or at anchor (key 5), with fenders all round.
FENDERS (key O) and four lines, bow, fore spring, aft spring and stern (keys 1–4), are now the skipper's job, and the lines hold her in the physics: warp her in, hold her against the wind or spring her off. Harbours with no mapped pontoons got marinas laid out, so every boat has room.
In Free Mode day and night follow the real sun and moon for her position and the clock, with twilight and stars, and the forecast's snow now falls as flakes in the 3-D view.
Harbour basins the map data had missed are now water, so every marina in the Gulf of Riga can be entered, and the harbours were rebuilt with more piers, pontoons, visitor berths and waterside buildings. The bridge view also starts wider.
At night ships show their deck and cabin lights with their bridges dark, the ports and towns glow on the horizon, and lights reflect on the water under a night sky with the moon, twilight and stars.
Two own vessels at the extremes: a 25.5 m, 48-knot motor yacht that climbs over the hump onto the plane, slams in a short chop and trims her drives, and a 5.3 m sea kayak that you paddle yourself, brace in breaking seas and roll or re-enter after a capsize.
Three more own vessels: an AC75 foiler (America's Cup class) that lifts clear of the water from about 16–18 knots of boat speed, a 40 m explorer motor yacht with hybrid and silent electric modes, and Libava, the replica of a 17th-century Dutch yacht from Liepāja.
Ran aground? ↶ 1 H BACK (key U) takes her back to where she was up to an hour earlier. ⛶ FULL fills the window on any device, with ✕ EXIT to leave, and ENTER or ⚓ DOCK opens docking mode: the harbour from above with only the controls you need.
Four more own vessels: LATEKO, a Beneteau 50 with twin wheels and a bow thruster, the Latvian-built sailing catamaran Namejs with two engines, and two dinghies, an ILCA 7 and an Optimist, that you hike out and right after a capsize.
Your own boat now shows her COLREG lights (Rules 20–25, Annex I), set by what she is doing: a power-driven vessel's masthead light, sidelights and sternlight, or a sailing vessel's lights under sail. Other skippers in the shared sea see the same lights.
Fog, rain, cloud and visibility in the 3-D view follow the MET Norway forecast, with rain clutter on the radar. The waves grow from the wind and the fetch, slow her and make her pitch and roll, and buoys and beacons wear their correct IALA colours and topmarks.
Logged-in skippers in Free Mode see each other's boats in the same sea area, on the radar, the chart and in 3-D, with the name, home port and flag they gave them, and the AI ships give way to them too. The wind is the real MET Norway forecast, the same for everyone in the area.
Free Mode is free for everyone, with no account. The shared sea and regattas need a free SkipperCheck account. The detailed Baltic and Croatian charts and every docking lesson come with Marine Simulator Training or the Skipper Refresher Course. The simulator is a training tool, not a navigation product.