Terms of service

Who we are

SailStarter teaches sailing fundamentals through short lessons and quizzes. These terms are the agreement between you and SailStarter. They cover the marketing site at sailstarter.com, the learning app at sailstarter.com/app, and the native SailStarter app, including iOS. Using SailStarter means you accept these terms.

SailStarter is operated by Ihor Tykhonenko. Our business address is 91-1037 Cleveland Ave, Riverview, NB E1B 0T9.

For support or questions about these terms, email owner Ihor Tykhonenko at tikhonenkoigor@gmail.com. Help with purchases and account deletion is also on our support page.

What SailStarter is

SailStarter is a beginner sailing course: short lessons on the fundamentals, each one ending in a quiz. It teaches sailing vocabulary, orientation and how boats behave to help you prepare for practical instruction. We update and expand the course as lessons are published.

Module 1 is free: every lesson and quiz in it, with a free account and no card needed. The rest of the course is on a paid plan, set out in full under Plans and billing below.

The marketing site, including the blog, curriculum and "Ready to crew?" diagnostic, is open to everyone, no account needed. Lessons need an account, because your progress is saved against it so that it follows you between devices.

Plans and billing

Module 1 is free with an account, with no card needed. Both paid plans unlock the full course on the same SailStarter account across supported devices.

• Monthly renews automatically each month until cancelled.
• Lifetime is one payment for permanent course access, with no renewal.

Web prices appear on our pricing pageand at checkout. For iOS purchases, the App Store shows the price and currency for your storefront in the app and Apple's purchase confirmation. Check the amount and renewal terms shown before you confirm a purchase.

Web purchases through Dodo Payments

Dodo Payments is the merchant of record for web purchases. It processes payment details, receipts and applicable tax; we never see or store your card number. To stop web Monthly renewals, open You in the app and follow Manage subscription to the web billing portal. Cancelling stops future renewals and keeps access through the period already paid for, provided you keep your SailStarter account.

Web Lifetime purchases carry our 14-day money-back guarantee. Email tikhonenkoigor@gmail.com within 14 days of the charge to request a refund. Web Monthly refunds follow Dodo's refund policy; contact us for help with the request. This web guarantee does not apply to purchases billed by Apple.

iOS purchases through Apple

Apple bills in-app purchases on iOS. Monthly renews automatically unless you cancel through Apple. Manage it in iPhone Settings: your name, Subscriptions, SailStarter. See Apple's cancellation instructions. Cancelling stops renewal; access continues through the paid period while your SailStarter account remains open. Lifetime has no recurring charge.

Apple handles refund requests for both Monthly and Lifetime purchases billed through the App Store. Request a refund at Apple's Report a Problem page. Eligibility is determined by Apple under its applicable policies. See Apple's refund guidance. We cannot issue an Apple refund through our web billing provider.

If an Apple purchase is missing, sign in to SailStarter and use Restore purchases in the iOS app with the Apple Account used for that purchase. RevenueCat validates the purchase and synchronizes access with your SailStarter account. If access still does not appear, contact support before buying again.

A web subscription and an Apple subscription are separate. If you have both, manage each with the provider that bills it. Account deletion cancels future renewals for all active web Monthly subscriptions, but you must cancel Apple Monthly separately. Uninstalling the app does not cancel either subscription. Account deletion and cancellation do not automatically refund a purchase.

Prices for new purchases or future renewals may change, with notice before a renewal price change takes effect. A change does not alter a period already paid for. Apple purchases remain subject to Apple's applicable purchase terms.

No certification, no affiliation

Lesson completion and quiz scores describe progress through this course. They are not an assessment of your competence on a boat.

Do not present a SailStarter lesson or score as a qualification to a skipper, charter company, employer or insurer.

Safety and your own judgment

SailStarter teaches fundamentals for learning purposes. The course is self-study material, not hands-on instruction: it is not a substitute for time on the water with a qualified instructor, and reading about a boat is not the same as handling one.

What you do on the water is your decision and your responsibility. If you are crewing, the skipper of that boat is in charge, and you should treat their instructions as final.

Rules, licensing, and equipment requirements vary by country and by region within a country, and they change. Our lessons label region-specific facts as region-specific rather than presenting them as universal, because something that is correct in one place can be wrong or unlawful in another. Before you go out, check what applies on the water you are sailing on, with the authority responsible for it.

We write carefully and we correct what we get wrong, but we cannot promise that every sentence in the course is right for your boat, your water, and your day. Sailing carries real risk. Learning the fundamentals ashore is a good way to arrive ready to pay attention; it is not a guarantee of anything once you are aboard.

Your account

You must be at least 16 to create a SailStarter account. That is our own rule, and it is the same rule our privacy policy states. SailStarter is not directed at children.

Sign in with an email code or one-time link, Google, or Apple. The first sign-in creates your account. Keep your email inbox and provider account secure, and do not share a sign-in code or link.

An account is for one person. Keep yours to yourself, and do not sign in to an account that is not yours.

Progress is saved against the account that earned it. There is no feature for moving progress to another account, and none for merging two accounts.

Acceptable use

The short version: use SailStarter to learn, and leave it working for everyone else. Specifically, do not:

• republish, sell, or redistribute our lessons, quizzes, illustrations, or diagrams (see What we own);
• run automated tools against the service to create accounts, submit quiz answers, or pull the course down faster than a person could read it; search-engine and answer-engine crawlers are welcome, on the terms below;
• try to reach any part of the service, the database, or another person’s account that is not yours to reach;
• attack, overload, or otherwise interfere with the service or its users;
• share your account with someone else, or sign in to an account that is not yours;
• use a display name that impersonates somebody, or that is abusive, hateful, or obscene;
• claim or imply that SailStarter has certified, qualified, endorsed, or trained you;
• break the law of the place you are in while using SailStarter.

If you find a security problem, email us at the address above rather than exploring it further. We would much rather hear from you.

Ending your account

Open You in the web or iOS app, select Delete account and confirm. This removes your account and saved course progress. If you cannot sign in or deletion fails, email tikhonenkoigor@gmail.com for help.

Deletion stops future renewals for all active web Monthly subscriptions, including any on hold or past due. Apple Monthly subscriptions must be cancelled separately through Apple, even if you also have a web plan. Deletion does not automatically refund any purchase. See Plans and billing.

Deletion includes RevenueCat customer cleanup, revocation of SailStarter's Sign in with Apple authorization for Apple-linked accounts, and removal of account-linked data from our active database. Separate payment-event records, provider transaction records, logs and backups may remain as explained in the privacy policy's retention section. Ask separately to remove your address from the course-update mailing list. The full deletion steps are in our privacy policy.

We can suspend or close an account that is being used in the ways listed under Acceptable use. If we close your account, we will email the address on it and say why. If you think that is a mistake, reply to that email and tell us.

Deleted course progress cannot be restored by signing in again or restoring a purchase.

What we own

SailStarter owns its original lesson text, quiz questions, explanations, illustrations, diagrams, name and logo. Third-party photos and other licensed material remain the property of their owners and carry the applicable credits and licence terms. Those licences govern reuse of that material.

You are welcome to read the lessons, take the quizzes, keep your own notes, and quote a short passage with credit and a link back to the page it came from. Search engines and answer engines are welcome to read us and quote us the same way; our robots.txt allows every crawler, deliberately.

Ask us first for anything beyond that: republishing a lesson or an article in full, using our material to teach or to build something of your own, or selling any of it. The answer is not automatically no.

The open-source software and typefaces SailStarter is built with stay under their own licenses, which we follow.

Your data

What we collect, who else handles it, and how to have it deleted are set out in the privacy policy, which is part of these terms.

Account and course records support sign-in and progress. Purchase records support paid access through Dodo on web and Apple with RevenueCat on iOS. Resend delivers sign-in emails and Netlify hosts the websites. Expo delivers native updates and processes installation identifiers, update usage, crash and diagnostic data for delivery, recovery and usage analytics. Google Analytics runs on the websites, not in the native app; RevenueCat also provides purchase analytics. The privacy policy explains these services, local storage and retained records.

Availability of the service

SailStarter, including any plan you have paid for, is provided as it is. We do not promise that the site and the app will always be available, that they will be free of faults, or that any particular lesson or feature will still be there next month.

The course changes. We add lessons, rewrite them when we find something wrong or out of date, and sometimes remove things. A correction can go live without notice: when something in the course turns out to be wrong, we would rather fix it that day than wait.

Features and availability can differ by platform and release.

We may stop offering SailStarter, or any part of it. If we ever shut the service down, we will email the address on your account first, so that you have the chance to ask us for a copy of what we hold.

Changes to these terms

When these terms change we update the date at the top of this page. If the change matters, such as a new restriction on use, a charge for something that is free today, or a change to what happens to your account, we will say what changed rather than quietly swapping the text.

Using SailStarter after a change means you accept the updated terms. If you would rather not accept them, stop using SailStarter and delete your account.