No race officer sailing

Originally posted by tink [---]Our fantastic sport has gone from hulls of solid wood, ply, GRP, foam sandwich and carbon. Masts from wood, alloy and carbon. Sails of cotton, Dacron and all sorts of films and laminates. I could go on about fittings, ropes, what we wear.  But despite the technology being available many would prefer labour intensive (error prone) flags, pencil and paper.

Although they haven't necessarily tried an alternative and may well have opposed GRP, aluminium / carbon spars and Mylar sails when introduced for their class...

And I'd bet there are plenty who do t even know what flags mean what they just know they go on the third hoot or x mins after the lasers etc.

There are runners who say all you need is a wrist watch and runners who say anything but a Garmin something-or-other is not even running.

It maybe needs the "business case" setting out... Like "we tried this method for a year... This is what we found" ideally with numbers like "we got 2 more people each week racing, we got 10 less results queries, we published results X hours/days/weeks/months sooner"

Santa brought me a copy of Club Sailor: from back to front. I've only read part 1 so far... But it's clear the author feels club sailors are being missed as a target, and it would strike me this is the same situation... Simon's trackers will be good at events and big very organised clubs. A stop watch is fine for a beginner. What's the solution for the gap between the two and especially what is the solution without using loads of volunteer resources. In covid times being close to other people especially the more vintage members is risky... While you can learn lots from the more experienced member and watching a race rather than just doing it. But you can also learn some of that replaying the race digitally...

Originally posted by polc1410 What do you back up the paper system with. 2 people. 3

My experience is that if electronic recording goes wrong it goes comprehensively wrong and you are completely stuffed, but if paper recording goes even very badly wrong (short of actually losing the sheet of paper) then it's usually possible to salvage something.

Originally posted by tink Club sailor is a great book and so refreshing to have a book aimed at us Sunday warriors. On my job list to read again

A well structured CSV imports fine into Sailwave. So results from DSRC can be done fairly easily. So if you were building a tracker upload page that took tracker feeds - you'd design its output to include a CSV file for Sailwave.

That said... You'd also design it to host the results and the series and offer all of sailwave's lovely features.

I'm 95% convinced that once a Sailwave file is built, there is so little that is hard to do with it, the reason people don't learn it, is not because it is hard, but because it means they don't have to do it...

There are a couple of other similar solutions and obviously Mr Lovesy would rather you all used his tracker and solution...

The complexity of sailing results (handicaps, discards, penalties) is so much more than almost any other sport. That meant early solutions like Sailwave were inevitable. Free solutions were always likely to win (if you wouldn't pay £50 a year for results software, you aren't paying £50 per tracker...) ... But it does mean that when they have shot down a slightly odd development pathway (Sailwave is written in some wierd coding language) the community can't improve it...

The ideal (in my opinion) would be a community developed DSRC, Sailwave, Tracker package. Because then the limits are the technology not what you do with the data...

Originally posted by ClubRacer There's more too it than just clicking import though. Imagine doing this once a year and how easily it is to not understand even the most comprehendible set of instructions; Finding the file from what ever device you've used, whether that means transferring it to the pc via stick/plugging in the said device/ pinging it over and saving the file in the correct location or just dumping it anywhere they can find on the desktop. I doubt its something most people do on the daily

So better would be that the import process of the trackers just built the results. If it is to know the course, where the line sits, it doesn't feel a leap of faith that it can give a race result. Once you have one result its not a massive task to join the results in a series.

Then you need to go through the wall of text Sailwave presents when uploading via CSV, ensure you don't overwrite any existing results or post into the wrong race as this then becomes an issue the results manager will have to then sort (far too common by the way!!) any overwritten results may never be discovered.

Use of git as a store for the files with automated commits would mean changes can be undone (you could do similar with cloud stores but not so easy to spot people meddling in your files!)

Mapping the CSV to use the correct info and ignore the irrelevant stuff such as name/class etc as any spelling mistakes or how its written will cock the whole thing up (Sailwave could easily sort this problem out by having it remember what the mappings were on the last use.

Your tracker download needs to use the names Sailwave defaults to and only export the right stuff. A unique sailor Id and boat Id feel the only correct way...

But I guess all it takes is someone to click the wrong button and no results would be being posted that day unless someone knew how to sort it.) Any incorrect info on the CSV such as wrong sail numbers etc will then create classes which confuse most people when it prevents them publishing the results (compared to using say the sail no. wizard you notice these issues as they appear and correct any minor mistakes before creating a result rather than just dumping a ton of problems into the table)

Options:

Print the results sheet and type it into Sailwave just like a PRO handing the paper over. No badly written times or numbers. You'll still get typos... 29,03 doesn't give you a 29.03/29:03 time. 229:03 doesn't either! Someone with a keen eye can unlock those. Or the sailor or their arch enemy will possibly report it. 29.3 may be a lot harder.

Sailwave is more transparent about what it is about to do... Been a while since I imported. But it could easily say
The following new competitors will be created... It may even be possible to look for possible similar matches...

You post the race result 'live' but not the series result. You let someone who knows what they are doing import the results and post them. They don't need to be at the club as they can download the file online.

Automatic GPS results sounds great and the £50 a tracker per annum sounds fairly good deal for the package but my club wouldn't go for it. The alternatives all sound like compromise, nothing is complete and all involves a ton of work arounds and problems. Pen and paper beats them all hands down for use ability for the less competent, and secure of any technical hiccups Don't get me wrong this isn't a case of complaining about Sailwave as I don't think you could make a better system for it. More of a complaining about dealing with sailing results in general and making sure its presented in a professional and manner which minimises the amount of time I have to spend doing it [/DIV

I think the assumption that paper results are actually right is a flaw though. We've all had the big event with two spotters recording 5th and 6th in opposite orders. The time results written as 29:43 30:59 30:08 31:15.

It sounds like people who have tried to compare video or sat to pen and paper have found 10 second anomalies. How many boat lengths is that?

I hand control of my result to some old duffer on the committee boat who hasn't done it for a year. When he cocks it up, he shrugs and says "does it really matter if you came last or second last (that is a genuine quote)
.) Yes it matters! I know I came at least second last maybe even third... I know I wasn't last but you couldn't be @r$£d to write my result down right. Hand back the responsibility to *me* and it is up to *me* to make my app work. If *I* screw that up that's no difference betweeto me sailing the wrong course etc.

I want to see the head to head comparison:

£50/pa
Android app (club can buy £70 waterproof mobile phones - no recurring costs) [need that for each app]
Possibly Garmin watch apps (I see RaceQs now has an app)
Paper

I want to know how many discrepancies are identified. Which is considered "right".. I want to know which the sailor prefers and I want to know which reduces "staff" (aka volunteer) time. It probably needs a year of a club doing a A:B comparison for *club racing*. But that can't be some grand club with loads of resources...

Then how the results are handled from the app is almost a seperate issue... But. Pretty sure that could be automated if the demand exists...

Disclaimer: I haven't used any app in anger *yet*... but I think it's very likely that next year I will do some RaceQs replayable races and will also look at beat racing... RaceQs seems to be quite well thought through to allow use as a training aid / virtual bar discussion of why Joe Bloggs beat me... Which in COVID times feels rather helpful... I can turn up sail, speak to no-one and go home and debate with my rivals what I did right / wrong online....