Too Many Boats Finishing Together

We had a big event at Bough Beech SC on Saturday and although we had 3 people combining to record the finishers there were moments when 6 or 7 boats were finishing together and 30 finishing within 3 or 4 minutes.  Our recording broke down - does anybody have a good technique for dealing with this problem?

I've used a dicta-phone or small recording device so I can just say the numbers in quick succession and sort out the order later; I'd also consider a Video camera on the finish line for this reason too. 

Had many a conversation about putting a small tracking device in boats so that you did not have to worry about this....  

The software I wrote to do our race results has a special screen to help with this.

Whenever the space bar is pressed on the 'time sheet' screen, the time of day is recorded on screen. Up to ten times are displayed before the display scrolls up.

Therefore if you get several boats come across at virtually the same time, you just press the space bar quickly for each boat. Someone else records the actual order they finish in by sail number, which can than be married up with the times recorded on screen.




Edited by James Bell

And thanks James for your suggestion.  We have a race timer with the ability to do just what you suggest but marrying up the boat numbers with the times is a problem.

I'll give you the benifit of my experience.  Don't do anything fancy, for instance don't try and separate out Juniors from Seniors and record their times on separate sheets (as was attempted on Saturday), that just takes extra time and can cause errors.  Just simply record sail number and time as each boat passes.  Don't try and keep separate lists for separate laps, just keep recording number and time and the number of laps of each competitor will emerge from the records you keep.  Don't write down the whole long number - Lasers prompt you by making the higher digits red - for you to ignore, try the same technique for Toppers, Mirrors and other high numbered classes.  Do use lined paper and if loads of boats cross at almost at once just get the number of each and the time of the first and the last and interpolate.

 

Having suffered on numerous occasions with trying to accurately record boats coming over the line (especially large G Handicaps) I now adopt the following (where the class permits)

Set a course with a short fetch to the line. There are samples  for single class events on www.sailor.org.uk/raceman. For large GH events, I use a trapezoid where the committee boat is about 30 yards up from mark 4 & the pin end is to stb of the CB & 45 degrees off the wind, quite a distance from the CB (to cover any wind shifts). As boats round 4, their natural line up the beat takes them through the gate/finish line & much closer to the CB than the pin end . This results in boats going round mark 4 & through the finsh line in virtual single file.    No kites to block out the main number, or create confusion when the number on the kite is different to the main  A copy of this course is on the Rutland web site in the SIs for the Symmetric Grand Prix

My recording equipment is a video camera which identifies boats in the general finish area and also has excellent voice recording facilities. So when I call the line, I have a voice record with the piccies attached, in case I miss a boat. I tend  to pan the camera right & left & zoom in & out, to cover the area between mark 4 & the finish line. I have now been able to dump my dictaphone. Also if necessary, I sometimes have duplicate recorders taking positions as the boats round mark 4 (just as an extra backup)

Finally, use scoring software which does not require you to record fleets/starting goups. Sailwave has an excellent facility where you can set up starts & classes in each start so that all you have to do is input the sail number & SW works out which fleet/start the boat was in & corrects times and/or allocates the correct finishing place.

Does this work??? Certainly does! I used it for the SGP (85 mixed class General Handicap) & apart from the odd user input error, all results were spot on each time.

Before any SGP people identify that it took a long time for the results, that was another problem which I have now resolved