Seems fun and promising.

London - Ludbeck:
Day 1: I have this little sloop and a contract to deliver goods to Ludbeck. I load my boat up with it and the rest of the space if taken up by food and water. Didn't have any money left for candles so hopefully they dont run out.
Left London bound east, making about 4 knots with all sails out in this very calm weather.
Day 2: Woke up to a terrible storm, stowed all sails except topsail. Pumping repetedly and course correcting. Storm continues all day, by evening it has subsided.
Day 3: Entering Kattegat, weather is calm. I trimmed the boat very accuratley and can timewarp the entire sound down to Ludbeck. Very satisfying. Evening approach to Ludbeck, around midnight I have only very little left to go. But I have a direct headwind so drop anchor and will moor tomorrow.
Day 4: Mooring takes all day as I should have come from the other direction. But as the sun sets I am moored at Ludbeck and have done my first contract.

In London, with only a few pounds in me wallet, I purchased some water and food and took on the most modest contract on offer. Then, on a fresh sunny morning, I deployed the tops, the jib, the stay and the main, and set out in my trim little sloop. When I got to the channel, a storm brewed up. Not what a poor sailor needed.

Leaving little sail deployed, I struggled through the nearly blinding rain, lightening crossing the sky, and tried not to capsize, eventually heading south.

I was very happy when, after a patient struggle and through the rain, I glimpsed the French coast drawing near. The sun was sinking, but I had not. The rain was growing weaker, and so was I. I removed all sail and dropped both anchors just off the coast. Then it was at last time to sleep. When I awoke, the storm had passed and the sun was up. But the wind was faint.

I can, and must, sail this thing. But lacking enough wind to turn her, I dropped the anchor away and used the winch to point her south. But the wind didn't pick up all day. A sailor doesn't always get everything he wants.

I won't be giving up (and needless to say I surely won't be refunding). There's a lot to like here already, and I take this game seriously, and I think the game merits that.

Two salt-encrusted thumbs way up!

Currently, this game is as early access as it gets. Upon entering, you are met with a simple "new game" screen, with a nice visual of your boat gently rocking in a harbour. When pressing new game, you'll have a long wait, as the game freezes up entirely, there is no loading screen, it just simply freezes until it loads.

Once the game loads, you feel the assets load around you, a large lag spike and your camera immediately jolts upward.

An extremely rudimentary instruction manual pops up, with old timey looking visuals, explaining the basic key binds. There are no instructions on sailing, there is no guide on how best to set your sails for given situations, just very simple screen shots of assets and their keybinds. An image of the local trader is also present, and it simply tells you to find it, but this can easily be missed.

Looking around, you're met with a surprisingly pretty, albeit extremely simple dock. You're in London. You wouldn't have a clue if the game didn't tell you, as there are no landmarks to indicate it, but you are nonetheless. The skybox is beautiful, and the ship is too. The few buildings there are have a Tudor aesthetic, and the sea looks very pretty.

Exploring the dock, there are a number of abandoned buildings in a row with closed doors, at the other end of the dock are a few market stalls. You'd be mistaken if you thought they were of any use. At the end of the dock is a ship yard, here you can purchase repairs for your ship, and scrub its hull. You can also change the colors of your ship, and its sails, using a hue scale, which is actually great as you can make a very unique looking ship. A feature i'm sure would be more pleasing if ever there is a multiplayer feature.

If you happened to miss, in the simple book, that there is a trader, then like me, you'd be lucky to stumble upon it, even though it's directly next to your ship, as the door is closed and there is nothing particularly inviting about it.
When you do finally find it, you will enter a bare room with a man sat at a table. Again, it is extremely uninviting, and boring to look at. When you speak to the trader, a screen pops up where you can take contracts, buy goods to trade, or simple supplies.
The contracts are extremely limited, as a new starter i would have hoped to be given a couple of local contracts to get me used to the system, the sailing, and to give me an incentive to progress, however they are randomly selected and simply tell you to sail to a dock.

Buying trade supplies, one of them will have a star icon by them. This is to indicate that the local dock manufactures these items, so buying them here will net you larger profits somewhere else. You'd however have to scroll through the discord server to find a random comment by the developer to know this.

Taking up a contract, your boat is automatically loaded. You again, don't know this, because nothing indicates it, but you'll find that out when you hop on your ship to have a look around.

The ship.

It's beautiful. The model work on it is great, there are some clipping issues occasionally, and the door to your cabin can be hellish to enter, as you can either clip through it, or get caught up by it.
You have three foresails, a top sail, and a main sail. You can haul these in or let them loose using ropes, and you can adjust them according to your wind as you see fit, however nothing teaches you any of this, you're best off just looking around the entire ship until a queue to press a keybind pops up, and observe what has happened when pressed. However I'd recommend first tying your ship to the dock, as it isn't automatically tied for some reason, so you'll start accidentally setting sail as soon as you lower a sail.

In your cabin, you have a bed in which you can sleep, a table with a map, and there is a "kitchen" behind the door which is effectively a book shelf. The kitchen holds your food stores, however the units aren't intuitive at all. You may have bought 1 food from the trader, but if you eat one food, you now have 0.9 food.
If you do not eat food, and you allow your health bar to deplete, well that's just fine because nothing happens other than getting a bit slow.

If you choose to sleep, your camera will switch to third person, and you will suddenly jolt forward at the speed of light (an exaggeration, it's 60x game speed, but when your game has to load all the world assets at 60x speed, and your ship suddenly starts flailing all over the place). This is not a smooth transition, it is jarring, immediate, and overwhelming. So you can find yourself cheesing this by sleeping for a couple of seconds at a time, this needs work.

Sailing the seas, is fun enough, setting the sails and setting course, but you won't really have a feel for how fast you're going, as it doesn't really feel like anything. The shader for the sea is pretty, but if you hit the wind right, you don't suddenly get that feeling of satisfaction, feeling your ship lurch forward, or any decent audible queues to let you know you've got it nice and tight, you just sort of will, or won't have it right.
If you enjoy simply sailing, and want to be able to do some sail work to chill out, then this is great. The feel of the boat definitely needs some updates, audio updates would not go amiss at all. But simply sailing, with the sun setting on the horizon, it's stunning.

There is an option to speed up your sailing time, just like what happens when you sleep. Thankfully the developer has updated this to add some slower speeds, as you used to be bolted forward at 10x speed, sometimes so abruptly your ship would spin around and you'd be stuck in a head wind. This feature feels, at the moment, completely unnecessary, the world, although the shape of the continents, is actually very small. If you sail from London to Amsterdam in a straight shot from port to the bend before the Amsterdam port, with the games speed increase, you can do it in around 30-40 seconds. The game dev has defended this by explaining "Try sailing to Jamaica, I bet it will take a couple of hours on normal speed". I don't understand why they believe spending a couple of hours in their game is bad thing, I would expect journeys to take a while, as I have bought a sailing game. However with it being just that, a game, a player will always take advantage of all opportunities for efficiency for the dopamine hit. Why the developer is trying to get you to speed run their game is beyond me, but here we are.

Once you reach port, and sell your goods to the trader, you have completed the game. Sure you could save up to by a bigger ship, but to what end? Your very first supply run is going to be no different from any other supply run, so sailing further is currently unnecessary. I asked the developer for future plans, and they have stated "Currently more ports, more ships and figuring out what more to do while sailing". I would definitely hold off from purchasing until more actual game play features are added to keep the player engaged, unless you are willing to pay to be an alpha tester for the very long foreseeable. I have hopes for this game, but in its current state, unfortunately i cannot recommend it, not for the price at least.

Best wishes to the developer, i'll be checking up in a year or so.

Another BANGER by Viking Game Studios. Sail the Seas is a realism-focused age of sail game that places the player in control of an 18th century trading vessel. As an avid enjoyer of games such as Sailwinds, this game was a must for my collection.
Let's go over the pros and cons, shall we?

• Beautiful detailing.
  The first ship model is stunningly detailed with every halyard, sheet, and line in a realistic and manageable location.
  
• Accurate Simulation.
  From the way the wind interacts with your sails to how the waves swell to wash the deck, the simulation of sailing has been lovingly crafted to most accurately depict the challenges and trials of sailing such a complex vessel.
  
• Active Developer.
  Viking Game Studio has proven themselves to be an attentive developer. Having put many hours into their other game, My Garage, I've seen first hand the work they've put in. I have full faith that this game with reach beyond early access and blossom into a delightful full release. VGS is also very active on their discord for both this game and MG, giving small interrum updates to the community in between game patches.

Ok now the painful one.

• EARLY ACCESS.
  Ok, ok I know I just went on about how this dev seems put together with the whole EA thing, but let's be real. It's still in early access. We DON'T know how the game will turn out months or years from now. Given this devs track record, EA is a risk I'm willing to take. It may not be one you're willing to take. Be sure you're ok with the game changing dramatically before you commit to a purchase of an Early Access game.
  
• Mild Jank.
  Being early access, there's still quite alot of mild jank about. Things such as stairs feeling sticky, controls doing weird things at time, and other misc bugs to play around. You may lose progress or run against a frustrating game-breaker at some point during the development process. So far, I haven't encountered game-breakers yet.
  
• Unfinished Map.
  The game isn't done yet, thus the "Whole World" aspect isn't either. You can sail the whole world at the moment, but only ports in Europe are complete. There's nowhere to stop in any other continent or island. VGS says more ports coming soon, but as of writing this review, they aren't present.

Overall, I would highly recommend this game to anyone who loves ships or sailing simulations and is ok with the growing pains of early access. I commend VGS on their release, and look forward to many updates.

I've been wanting a game like this FOREVER! I love sailwind and have a few hundred hours in that game but was hoping for something more along these lines and here it is. The game is a little rough around the edges but for being early access, it's off to a good start. My only hope is that the developers don't abandon this game like what has happened with so many other promising games. I look forward to seeing the game progress and I'm glad I can say that I was literally here from day one to watch it evolve into something great.

Dev is really into it. Someone suggests a feature (crew men), one month later its allready in the game. You find a bug? 10mins later its fixed.

Could become indie game of the year if progress keeps on like that.
Right now the game has basic core features (open sailing, crew management, povisions, different ports and ships, trading and missions) its playable, but still bare bones.
Also saves aren't as stable as they are supposed to be. Expect crashes, bugs and fps drops.

But would buy again

I bought this game after having watched a couple of videos on You Tube and I have to say I'm enjoying it very much. I agree with others that there are improvement that could, and probably will be made. I think a cursor would help as I find it difficult to locate halyards and sheets sometimes, especially the main sheet located on the cabin roof. It takes a little while to discover and get used to where things are. I tried to sleep whilst the ship was under weigh and ran aground twice. Luckily, it's possible to kedge off with the anchor. This is also useful when one gets in irons, which I seem to do on nearly every tack. I quite like the simple navigation system, the map tells you where you are at all times but I gather there is going to be a more complex system in time.

I like having to manage the ship and systems, although I'm still a bit hazy about the trading system as I haven't yet reached my first destination, which I rather foolishly chose as Stockholm, quite a distance for not much reward. It is fun though, to be able to put into ports on the way.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes sail and trading games and I hope there will be developments in the future.

Edit: The game currently does not (appear to) have physical simulation of sail mechanics or water-hull interaction.
The map is the whole world but it is at a tiny scale and only the UK, the baltic and mediterranean have cities to interact with.

I am keeping my review positive as the dev is very active and communicates on discord . However, at the current state, I'd recommend Sailwind over this.
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Original Review
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I haven't even left the Thames yet but this is already looking like the peak age of sail sim. Imagine Sailwind, but real world and real ships. Can't wait to exp;ore more features and the future features sound great as well.
Best simulator of the year (yes, I'm looking at you MSFS24)

we'll get to la rochelle if i have to row there myself

I tried the game for 2 hours and while initially it seemed to be alright - I quickly realised that it is vert bare bones and for 20 euros I am getting nothing more than a promise of eventually finished product. Sailing and the ships are great, but the world at the moment is nothing more than land and sea. It does not matter whenever you're in Scandinavia, Indian Ocean or Carribean - it all looks and feels the same.
Dev states that he will release the game in 2025 December, but seeing the pace of updates (which are regular, but small in size) and how much was done since release to early access - it either will take a lot longer than ~8 months for proper release or the game will be lacking and pretty basic content wise on launch.
I love sailing games and I been watching this one for a bit, but this ain't it yet chief.

If you're looking for something similar, but more content complete - get Sailwind instead, it has the same gameplay, but feels more polished and finished.
Hopefully both games will be equally great one day. Best wishes to the single developer.

TL;DR - Too early and not worth 20 euros.