What it is
The E-scow is a 28-foot, flat-bottomed racing scow sailed by a crew of four, famous on Midwest and mountain lakes. It is fast, powerful and tippy, which makes it a great boat to learn sail trim and boat handling on. escow.io is a 3D trainer built around one: you steer, and depending on your help level you also trim the sails, work the bilgeboards and move the crew.
- 28 ftlength overall
- 4crew
- 870 sq ftmain, jib and spinnaker
- 22%thinner air than sea level
It is for new sailors who want to understand how a sailboat actually works, scow sailors who want some time on the water in the off-season, and anyone curious what sailing at 8,369 feet feels like.
How to sail it
Pick a skipper name, a hull color and a help level, then press Set sail. There are three help levels:
- Learn: the crew trims every sail and you only steer.
- Sailor: you trim the main and jib yourself.
- Racer: you also handle the bilgeboards and hike the crew to hold the boat flat.
On a keyboard, A and D steer, W/S trim and ease the main, E/Q the jib, Space hoists the spinnaker and T tacks or gybes. On a phone or tablet there are touch controls instead. Eight guided lessons walk you from finding the wind through trimming to the telltales, sailing close-hauled, tacking, holding the heel, gybing, flying the spinnaker and rounding a windward mark.
How it works
The boat is a physics model, not an animation. Each sail makes lift and drag from the apparent wind, so it luffs when it is eased too far and stalls when it is sheeted too tight. The hull planes when it gets going, the bilgeboards and twin rudders resist sideways slip, and heel is balanced against the crew's weight on the rail. Get it wrong and you will capsize.
The wind is a shifty westerly with puffs, lulls and wind shadows behind the terrain. It is deterministic, so every sailor on the lake sees the same gusts and shifts at the same time. Because the lake sits at 8,369 feet, the air is about 22% thinner than at sea level, and the same breeze makes less sail force.
Grand Lake itself is built from real data: the shoreline and docks from OpenStreetMap, the mountains from USGS elevation data served as AWS terrain tiles. E-scow dimensions come from the Melges class spec, and the trim technique from the Quantum and Melges tuning guide.
Questions
Is escow.io free? Do I need to install anything?
It is free and runs in a modern browser on desktop, tablet or phone. It needs WebGL, which almost every current browser supports.
Can I sail with friends?
Yes. Everyone who opens escow.io sails on the same lake in the same wind, with names above each boat and a minimap showing where everyone is. Pausing takes your boat out of the water.
What is an E-scow?
A 28-foot planing scow designed for lake racing: a wide, flat hull, two bilgeboards instead of a centerboard (you raise the windward one), twin rudders and a large asymmetric spinnaker on a retractable pole.
Where is Grand Lake?
On the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. It is the state's largest natural lake, about 507 acres, and home to the Grand Lake Yacht Club, founded in 1902 and one of the highest yacht clubs in the world.
The wind is up on Grand Lake.
Open escow.io