This paper explores the amount of motion simulation required to influence presence and immersion on a dinghy sailing simulator. We specifically focused on the effects of roll, pitch and heave, when sailing an course with up-, side-and down-wind sections in a virtual environment. A real dingy was mounted on a 6 Degrees of Freedom (DOF) Stewart platform; the participants could influence the course of a virtual boat by a rudder while experiencing physical displacement by simulated wind and waves. Five experienced sailors completed the same course several times while subjected to varying motion conditions. Results show a positive effect on presence and immersion when adding simulated motion in multiple degrees of freedom to the dinghy sailing simulator, especially by roll (>20 degrees necessary), while pitch is of less importance (<5 degrees necessary) and heave (less than 10 cm) can almost be neglected. These findings are of importance for developing boat simulators and other virtual sports applications that employ actuated platformsDesign EngineeringIndustrial Design Engineerin