Sail a cargo ship around the Atlantic on the real wind belts. Carry wine, medical equipment and cocoa between four ports, and race the ghost of today's best route.
“The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.”Ecclesiastes 1:6
The game's winds for wind (white streaks drift the way it blows)Gulf Streamyour course: fast, steady, slow or zigzagfreight late on this coursefreight this course would not deliveryour ship's wakethe ghost ship, on today's best routeports
The winds blow clockwise around a high in the middle of the North Atlantic, turning a little outward[7]. The high sits near the Azores in winter and early spring and near Bermuda in summer and fall[6], so the game moves it with the date of the year. On its south side are the trade winds, from the northeast, up to about 30 degrees north[1][2]; on its north side the westerlies, from the southwest, between 30 and 60 degrees[2]; in its middle the light winds of the horse latitudes[2]; and near the equator the calm doldrums, about 5 degrees either side[1]. Those are the usual directions: on any one day the wind in a belt can swing some way from them, as it does in this game. The little white crests on the map follow the Beaufort scale: crests begin to break at force 3, a gentle breeze of 7 to 10 knots, and the white crests sailors call white horses grow more frequent from force 4[12].
The Gulf Stream runs up the American coast and across toward Europe at about 4 miles an hour on average, up to 5.6, slowing to about 1 in the north[3]. The ship sails no faster than 12 knots and carries up to 350 metric tons, like the sailing cargo ship Grain de Sail II, whose crossings take around two weeks[5][8]. On this game's own winds, on the 1st and 15th of each month of 2026, the ghost ship crossed from New York to Saint-Malo in 10.5 to 12.8 days, while its other crossings between Saint-Malo and the Americas took 13.0 to 22.0 days. A metric ton is 1,000 kilograms and a US ton 907.1847 kilograms[13], so the hold takes 385 US tons, and every ton in the game is a US ton. A knot is one nautical mile an hour, about 1.15 miles an hour[4].
The freight is what ships like it really carry. From Saint-Malo they take goods such as wine, medicines, dry food and musical instruments[9][8]; between New York and the Dominican Republic they carry medical equipment[8]; and they bring cocoa home[5][9]. In 2025 the Dominican Republic rose to fourth place among the countries sending organic food to the European Union, thanks to more cocoa beans[10], and Grenada exports nutmeg and cocoa[11].
These are the game's own choices, not measurements: the winds themselves, which the game makes up for each day of the year from the belts above, so "the game's winds for" a date are not that day's real weather; how hard each belt blows (14 knots in the trades, 18 in the westerlies, 5 in the horse latitudes, 3 in the doldrums); where exactly the high sits, how big it is, and when it moves between Bermuda and the Azores (from May to about June 20, and in the last three weeks of December); how fast the ship goes at each angle to the wind, and that it cannot point closer than 45 degrees to the wind, so it zigzags; that its crew steers around land they see ahead; that a leg can last at most 60 days; the planned course's colors, green where the ship makes 8 knots or more and orange where it makes under 4 or zigzags into the wind; the pilot's way around Brittany, and that within 26 nautical miles of a port the pilot takes over, so its coast cannot wreck the ship; and where each port's dot sits. The winds stay as they are on the starting date for the whole voyage.
The freight and the race are ours too: which port each job goes to (except New York to the Dominican Republic, and cocoa to France), how many tons, the pay, which is in game dollars and is not a real freight rate, and the days allowed, which are 1.3 times the ghost ship's time for that trip plus 2 days, rounded up. A job is due by a whole day, so freight loaded on day 21.6 with 14 days allowed is due by day 36. A late delivery is paid half. The ghost ship sails the best route the game can find for each leg, by searching a grid of the sea and then trying small changes; you win gold within 2% of its time, silver within 6% and bronze within 15%. A voyage calls at one or two of the ports in the Americas, in any order, and then comes home; that is ours too, so a voyage takes three legs at most. The day's three stars come from the ghost ship's best voyage of the day: the game tries every such voyage from Saint-Malo, sails each at the ghost ship's own times, and takes at each port the jobs it can deliver on time, best pay first, while they fit. The home star is for coming home to Saint-Malo by 1.25 times that voyage's days, rounded up, with freight delivered; the money star for earning more than 95% of what it earns, rounded to the nearest $100; and the ghost star for earning as much as it does, or more. These two numbers were chosen by testing on 20 dates, with every leg sailed 10% slower than the ghost ship: a voyage that loads everything and calls at the ports in any order earned the home and money stars about 4% of the time and the ghost star about 3%, while a planned voyage earned the home and money stars on 16 of the 20 dates and the ghost star on 16. Earning more than the ghost ship's best voyage was possible on only 1 of the 20 dates, which is why the ghost star asks for as much as it earns. The Ghost chip shows what the ghost ship's best voyage had earned by the day shown, so you can see how you compare along the way, though only what you have earned at the end counts for the ghost star; once your voyage is over, it shows what the ghost ship's whole voyage earned. The pale ghost ship on the map is something else: it races only the leg you are on, from when you set out, so it can be somewhere other than where the ghost's voyage had gotten to by that day. A star is shown as gone only when that is certain on the voyage as it stands, which happens to the home star once you are past its day; to the money star and the ghost star once even all your freight and every job still open to your voyage, paid in full, could not reach them; and to any star not earned once the voyage is over. Sailing a leg again takes the voyage back to the day that leg began, with the pay and the stars it had then. Freight for a port your voyage can no longer call at cannot be loaded, and any already in the hold can be left in port, unpaid, to make room. So can freight for any port in the Americas while the hold has freight for more of them than your voyage can still call at. A course the ship could not finish, one that would make a leg longer than 60 days in all after a stop at sea, or one that would take the ship within 26 nautical miles of any port but the one it leaves and the one it sails to, where that port's pilot would take over, cannot be sailed, a rule the ghost ship's routes keep too. Time is sped up: the ship sails 2.4 days every second.
A season is ours too: a year of voyages from the day you start it, played under "A season" at the top of the page. Each voyage leaves Saint-Malo on the day the last one came home, with that day's winds, so the high moves and the quickest routes change as the months go by, and each still calls at one or two ports before coming home. After each of the first three voyages that call at a port, one more port opens. Ponta Delgada in the Azores sends cheese, the biggest part of the islands' dairy trade, most of which goes to mainland Portugal[16]. Las Palmas in the Canary Islands sends bananas, since the islands grow all of Spain's bananas[17]. Hamilton in Bermuda buys far more than it sells, most of it from the United States, and among the few things it sends abroad is rum[18]. Sailors still cross this way: rallies leave Las Palmas for the Caribbean on the trade winds in November[14], and sail back in May by way of Bermuda and the Azores[15]. Where the season's jobs go, their sizes and their pay are ours, as on today's voyage. In Saint-Malo, before each voyage leaves, the shipyard can fit a bigger hold for that voyage: it carries 540 tons instead of 385, for $380 a day, taken from the voyage's pay when it comes home. It is fitted for one voyage at a time, so each voyage starts with the ship's own hold. The hold, its fee and the year's length are ours. The fee was set with bots of ours that plan every voyage, sailing whole seasons, then checked on 8 start dates it was not set on: bots that never fitted the bigger hold banked about $810,000 in a year on average, bots that fitted it on every voyage banked about $780,000, and bots that chose before each voyage, fitting it when the board's freight paid for it, banked about $840,000. Choosing beat fitting it every time on 7 of the 8 dates and beat never fitting it on 6, and the bots that chose fitted it on 33 of their 74 voyages. The bigger hold pays when the freight it makes room for, delivered on time, pays more than its fee for the voyage's days, and loses money when it does not. A full board is not enough, since much of a board's freight can go to ports the voyage will not reach in time; in Saint-Malo, freight that fits only with the bigger hold says so. A bigger hold does not change how the ship sails, so the ghost ship's routes, the freight's deadlines and its pay are the same with it or without it. In a season the ghost ship also keeps 52 nautical miles, twice a harbor's reach, from every port it does not call at, so its route can be traced without straying into one. Your score is the money in your bank when the year is up and the last voyage has come home.
Your best voyage of the day, its stars, what it earned and how many days it took, and whether you have seen the how-to-play tours, are kept in this browser only and never sent anywhere. So are your season, saved each time the ship arrives or is in port, and your best season's score.