Single-handed sailors and weekend yachties — the worst-case scenario is going over the side without the rest of the crew noticing. Vygard Sailing watches three signals together (immersion, sudden HR drop, stillness) to auto-fire MOB to the boat and a shore contact within seconds of you hitting the water.
We start watching the watch's heart rate, immersion sensor, and accelerometer. Pre-flight check confirms the watch is wet-rated for the day's weather.
Sudden immersion (the watch suddenly wet) + HR pattern change (cold shock) + accelerometer profile (free-falling clear of the deck) all three together = MOB. Any one alone won't trigger.
Other crew on the boat get a loud audible + haptic on their watches. Your shore contact gets a live pin via app + SMS. VHF DSC alert too if your radio supports the standard.
No clever onboarding to dig through, no settings menu to find. Open the app, see one big button. Tap it. Get on with the sail. The whole UI is built around “your hands are on the tiller, not the phone”.
Apple Watch / Garmin sensors detect water on the skin. We use this as the necessary signal, not the only signal — solves the rain false-positive problem.
Going overboard in cold water produces a distinctive heart-rate pattern. We detect that within 4 seconds of immersion.
Falling clear of the deck has a unique signature vs jumping in voluntarily. The classifier is conservative — we'd rather miss a voluntary swim than fire false MOB.
On a crewed boat, alert all crew watches at once. On a single-handed yacht, alert shore contact + VHF directly. Same app, different mode on launch.
If your VHF supports DSC distress with Bluetooth-tether, we fire a real Mayday + position. Falls back to SMS / 999 if not.
On a single-handed boat, the app keeps pinging shore every 4 hours during a passage. Missed check-in escalates automatically.
Auto man-overboard needs an immersion-rated watch on your wrist. Apple Watch Ultra is the headline device — depth-rated to 100 m, properly water-resistant, fast HR sampling. Garmin quatix is the long-standing skipper alternative. iPhone in a dry bag on the boat is the bridge to VHF DSC if your radio supports it.
App is free to install; Watch hardware is your call. We don't sell devices and never will — you bring what fits your sailing.
For an extra few pounds a month, Vygard's AI virtual watcher takes over the quiet 24/7 monitoring job that your trusted contact can't reasonably do. Howie sits in between your check-ins and your home contact, flagging anomalies before either of you have any reason to worry.
Vygard Sailing
Auto man-overboard detection on the watch, shore-contact alerts, VHF DSC bridge. You handle watchkeeping. We catch what you can't see coming.
Vygard Sailing + 24/7 AI watcher
Vygard's AI virtual watcher tracks your passage 24/7. Flags vessel-status anomalies, weather routing concerns, and missed solo-skipper check-ins — particularly worth it on overnight or single-handed legs where there's nobody else to notice if you're nodding off at the helm.
Solo skipper hasn't checked in for 6 hours during a passage planned at 4-hour intervals — Howie pings the boat with a quiet 'still OK?' before the standard 12h shore-contact alert fires.
Vessel drifting outside the expected GPS corridor — Howie spots the route deviation, surfaces it with current wind + tide and asks you to confirm course.
Met Office or NOAA marine forecast deteriorates mid-passage — Howie surfaces it with the specific area + alternative anchorage suggestions, not just a generic warning.
Watchkeeping fatigue patterns (HR + activity profile suggests the helmsman is drifting off) — Howie suggests a watch handover or anchor-up at the nearest safe haven.
Howie is a Large Language Model running on your activity + check-in data. It can't replace human judgement and isn't a substitute for situational awareness, proper kit or telling someone where you're going. It's the layer that catches quiet anomalies before they become emergencies — and quietly does nothing the majority of the time, which is the whole point.
Every Vygard Personal app is designed so the vast majority of alerts cost us nothing to send. SMS and WhatsApp — which we'd otherwise burn at 3-5p per message — kick in only as an emergency fallback. That's why the apps stay at £4.99/mo.
If your contact has any Vygard app installed, they get a push notification with the alert + a tap-to-call button. Instant, no SMS cost.
If they don't have a Vygard app, your phone's own Messages app opens with a pre-filled SOS text + a one-tap install link. iMessage and RCS deliver it for free.
If your contact can't be reached any other way — or it's a genuine unconscious SOS where you can't tap — Vygard sends an SMS via Twilio. Counted against your monthly allowance.
Parallel path to SMS for contacts who use WhatsApp as their primary messenger. Same counting, same allowance pot.
Sized for ~5 SOS events per month at 4 messages each. Most users never get close to the cap. If your allowance runs out mid-month, the app falls back to opening your phone's Messages composer instead of blocking the alert — your safety is never gated on a billing limit.
Top-ups are monthly add-ons in your account settings — cancel anytime, no contract.
Per-user SMS cost is the biggest variable expense in any consumer safety app. If we shipped "unlimited SMS" on a £4.99 sub, we'd have to choose between losing money on heavy users or making the cap dishonest. By being explicit upfront — push-first, native handoff, then metered SMS — we keep the sub price low for everyone, and the people who do need more (frequent travellers, large family groups) pay a fair top-up.
Full breakdown in the FAQExisting AIS MOB devices (McMurdo, Ocean Signal) cost £200+, need annual battery service, get forgotten in a pocket. Most leisure sailors don't carry one. An Apple Watch already on the wrist with a £7.99/month subscription gives you 80% of the AIS MOB benefit at 10% of the cost. Not a substitute for an AIS unit in a single-handed offshore race — absolutely is one for a weekend on the Solent.
Vygard Sailing is intended for inshore and coastal sailing within VHF + cellular coverage. For offshore passages beyond cellular range you need a dedicated AIS MOB device + EPIRB — we are not a substitute for those. The auto-MOB classifier is conservative; voluntary jumps from the deck (cooling off, dinghy boarding) may not trigger. Wear a lifejacket. Clip on. The app is the layer that catches what the lifejacket and tether don't.
We'll email when Vygard Sailing ships (Available now). No spam, one email, you're first in line.