The story behind Medvind

If you've found your way to this page, you're likely already curious about the app or the partnership behind it. Behind Medvind stands a company many of our members will know by name, though perhaps not the full story: Trelleborg Group.

Trelleborg Group was founded in 1905 in the Swedish coastal town that gave the company its name. What began as a rubber boot manufacturer has grown into a global engineering group with a unique portfolio covering a broad range of applications – even the most complex ones.

Within the group, Trelleborg Marine and Infrastructure focuses on what happens where vessels meet ports, harbors and coastal waters. It’s also the part of the company most of you have already encountered without knowing it: for decades, its fender systems lining commercial quays, docking and mooring solutions, and navigation and piloting systems have helped vessels berth safely in ports around the world, environments where margins are tight, conditions change quickly and decisions carry weight.

Out of that experience on the water, and the navigation expertise at its core, comes Medvind: a navigation app for yachting built with Svenska Kryssarklubben (SXK) on a single, straightforward idea — navigation should reflect the way you actually sail.

And that idea is being put into practice in a very direct way. Medvind is shaped by real use on real journeys, with our members not simply along as early users, your feedback is directly influencing how it evolves, in close dialogue with the team behind it.

You can read more about Trelleborg Group and Trelleborg Marine and Infrastructure here: https://www.trelleborg.com/

From professional pilotage to the leisure helm

Navigation is not a new direction for Trelleborg, it is where some of their deepest expertise sits. For over 30 years, Trelleborg has developed navigation and piloting systems used in ports across the world by maritime pilots, the specialists who guide large vessels through harbors and confined waterways. They are built for situations that leave little room for uncertainty: chart data must be accurate, current and structured to support decisions as they happen.

Medvind builds directly on that foundation. The same team, the same approach to data quality, and the same understanding of what makes information genuinely useful on the water: not separate layers of tides, depths and positioning to interpret, but a coherent view of the situation at hand. What Trelleborg has spent decades refining for professional pilotage, Medvind brings to the leisure helm.

Professional standards, designed for sailors

The move into leisure navigation comes from a clear observation. Much of what is available today has either been adapted from commercial systems or built around hardware first. Meanwhile, both data quality and expectations have moved on. Sailors today are more informed, more independent, and looking for tools that work intuitively, without compromising on reliability.

The moments Medvind is designed for will be familiar to any Svenska Kryssarklubben member: approaching an unfamiliar harbor late in the day, planning a passage around shifting conditions, deciding whether to push on or turn back. These are the moments that shape a trip, and they call for a tool that is simple to use but based on well-structured, dependable data - the kind of data Trelleborg has been building professional navigation systems around for over three decades.

A partnership built to evolve

This partnership with Svenska Kryssarklubben is central to how Medvind is being developed and it reflects a deliberate choice on both sides. SXK brings some of the most experienced leisure sailors on the water. Trelleborg brings the navigation expertise and data rigor built through decades of professional pilotage. Together, that is what makes it possible to build something that genuinely meets the standard our members deserve.

Feedback from some of the most experienced leisure sailors on the water carries the same weight as technology itself.

Looking ahead, developments such as the suite of  S-100 chart standards will make digital navigation more dynamic and responsive, and Medvind is designed to evolve with that shift, becoming more useful over time.

At its core, the idea remains simple: navigation that fits how you actually move on the water – not the other way around.