The strip across the top of the screen is there on every Sail screen except Race, which has its own header. It answers the questions you would otherwise have to go looking for: is the track recording, where is the position coming from, are the instruments talking, and how old is the forecast.
What it shows
From the left, each item is an icon with a short label under it:
- Rec. Whether the track is recording.
- GPS. Where the position comes from: the boat's GPS, this phone, or the watch.
- Inst. The instrument connections.
- Wx. The age of the forecast on board.
- Link. How the phone is connected: offline, Wi-Fi, cellular, satellite or the boat's network.
- Out. What is waiting to send.
Green is good, amber needs a look and red needs action. A small badge on the icon says the same by shape, so the state still reads in Red mode, where every color is a shade of red. A gray item has nothing to report.
When the strip is short of room, it drops the values first, then the less urgent items. Rec is always the last to go.
Then come the battery, the clock and two buttons: Lock, which locks the screen (see Lock the screen), and the display mode, which switches Day, Night and Red (see Night mode). The phone's own status bar is hidden: it is too small to read in a cockpit and would spoil night mode.
Tap for details
- Rec. When nothing is recording, a tap starts the track straight away. While it records, a tap shows Recording since the start time and the number of fixes, with Stop, which you hold to stop the recording.
- GPS and the others. An item with more to say opens it in plain words. GPS gives the source, the fix quality, and how accurate the position is. If iOS is limiting what Offwind can do in the background, it says so, with a link to Safety.
Notices
When Offwind changes something by itself, the strip says so for three seconds where the clock was: Switched to Night, Rotation locked, Locked: face down. Notices never cover the chart or the data.
Stop output
If Offwind is sending anything to the boat's instrument network, a red Stop output button appears in the strip on every screen. One tap stops all of it.