Sailwave Support: Sailwave or HAL

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Sailwave or HAL

Printed From: Yachts and Yachting Online
Category: General
Forum Name: Sailwave Support
Forum Discription: The place to ask questions relating to this popular sailing results program
URL: http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6303
Printed Date: 10 May 25 at 3:17pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.665y - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Sailwave or HAL

Posted By: A Seabadger
Subject: Sailwave or HAL
Date Posted: 02 Jan 10 at 3:58pm

We are looking at changing our club computer system and programmes for calculating results of handicap racing. We currently use and old bespoke system.

Or problem is that our race officers only do 2 duties a year, so any system would have to be very easy and intuitave to use. We would like the system to also be able to send returns to the RYA for PY adjustment.

Any comments or suggestions?

Thanks
Seabadgers's mum
(She's left the computer signed in again!)

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I don't suffer from insanity...I enjoy every moment of it.

Replies:

Posted By: Garry
Date Posted: 06 Jan 10 at 11:14am

I learnt to use sailwave on my own without any great problem. Someone could set up your race series templates and scoring system at the start of the season just leaving the race officer to enter the competitors, times and then score.

There are a few quirky bits, like publishing the results but you can easily work it out with some experimentation

Why not download it and try it out?

Garry

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Garry

Lark 2252, Contender 298

www.cuckoos.eclipse.co.uk

Posted By: marke
Date Posted: 06 Jan 10 at 11:51am

Sailwave is a great piece of software, but our experience is that its not something you can pick up on the day you are OOD. You need to get some experience of using it before trying to produce the results. If you have ~30 OODs during the year I think that is going to be hard to do.

Most clubs use sailwave by having a results officer/fleet captain who takes the elapsed times from the OODs and creates the race and series results. A results officer can quickly pick up how to use Sailwave effectively. The problem with this approach is that it can take a while to generate the results and often the results officer has problems intrepreting the information provided by the OODs (e.g. matching up competitors for series results) - unless you have a results officer who can work alongside the OODs to get the results out quickly.

At our club we wanted the results out quickly (a few minutes after the race finishes) and we wanted to reduce the complexity for OODs and Results Officer. We developed our own software that both times the race and generates the individual race and series results and automatically publishes them to our website. Its not been easy, but over a period of a couple of years we have refined a system that works pretty well with a wide variety of OODs. We continue to develop the system and next year we will introduce computer based signon/off which further reduces the work for the OODs (and puts the onus on the competitors to enter correctly).

Posted By: JohnW
Date Posted: 06 Jan 10 at 11:52am

+1 for sailwave.

The class captains update the results each week, but simple for the race officer to do too with just a couple of minutes needed to learn the basics.

Posted By: patj
Date Posted: 07 Jan 10 at 9:46pm

Sailwave. Free to download, easy to use. Latest versions let you import selected competitors from previous series (and from more than one) which is just genius for clubs with many of the same competitors doing the series or for our cvrda open events where turnout is unpredictable and handicaps are boat specific and we need previous info.

Posted By: marke
Date Posted: 08 Jan 10 at 9:35am

I would be interested to know of clubs that have their OODs using Sailwave to produce the results immediately after each race . . and how they configure Sailwave to make this as easy as possible . . and do you use rota'd OODs

Posted By: laser4000
Date Posted: 08 Jan 10 at 9:49am

Originally posted by marke

I would be interested to know of clubs that have their OODs using Sailwave to produce the results immediately after each race . . and how they configure Sailwave to make this as easy as possible . . and do you use rota'd OODs

We do - have about 30 ood's rota'd over the season, although I am off this weekend as the pond is frozen! Production of the results is one of the jobs of the OOD's

For the thursday night (40 boats+) handicap racing in the summer the results are generated straight after racing, and usually by the time your on that 1st beer they get brought upstairs. Ditto for club trophy days and other one off events. In theory they're meant to be printed out every race day for the handicap fleets, but given we're pretty good at getting them put on the website, then I tend not to bother unless the handicap fleet is particularly large that day.

As to how SW is setup to facilitiate this - I'm not sure exactly as I'm not a sailwave god - I just follow the printed instructions and it usually works ok. I'm sure I could put you in touch with the club's sailwave god if you'd like further input - drop me a pm.

Originally posted by marke

At our club we wanted the results out quickly (a few minutes after the race finishes) and we wanted to reduce the complexity for OODs and Results Officer. We developed our own software that both times the race and generates the individual race and series results and automatically publishes them to our website. Its not been easy, but over a period of a couple of years we have refined a system that works pretty well with a wide variety of OODs. We continue to develop the system and next year we will introduce computer based signon/off which further reduces the work for the OODs (and puts the onus on the competitors to enter correctly).

Sounds like a great idea - I do agree with some of your comments about sailwave not being totally easy for a novice user to add a set of results into a club series. I had a play around with it when doing the series results for the 4000 fleet, but as we had a slightly unusually scoring system (100 pts for DNE) I found it easier to stick to my excel skills. However I've usually managed to produce the results using sailwave for the club.

However I'm also not sure I'd rush to develop my own software - what happens when the member responsible for writing it gets ill, leaves, moves house or finds another hobby. Is the source-code documented? are there others within the club that understand how the nuts and bolts works etc You also then miss out on the advantages offered when there is a new release of sailwave - e.g. the auot-generation of the handicap returns..

Posted By: chrisg
Date Posted: 10 Jan 10 at 8:05pm

I'd agree with MarkE, sailwave wouldnt be my first choice for a different OOD to use each week. It is a fantastic piece of software for producing results, calculating handicaps, publishing to the web and uploading the results to the RYA PYS website. However, it does have it squiks and as such, I feel is best used by one "results officer" who sorts the results out each week after racing. I am that person for our club and have had no problems as yet. I am self taught in the ways of sailwave so if I can do it anyone can.

I'd say download sailwave, have a little play and see if you like it. If you need any help with it, or with what you need to do for RYA returns please let me know and i'll se if I can help as Ive ben using it for a while now.

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Posted By: marke
Date Posted: 10 Jan 10 at 11:34pm

Laser4000
I took over the development from a previous member - not too hard; its written in a fairly straighforward open source technology stack.

I'm hoping to get a couple of other clubs using the software this year, so that I can investigate variations that I need to cope with beyond what we need at my local club (which is already pretty variable - class, handicap, pursuit, average lap, laser rig merging etc.. I have a some clubs interested and they are already helping me define the changes necessary.

If all goes well this year, I'll make it open source and open it up to development by anybody who wants to get involved - just got some ugly code to fix first!

Posted By: chris.woodsail
Date Posted: 21 Mar 11 at 6:15pm

I try to get the results published straight after every race using sailwave. Its a bit of a struggle, with diffrent OODs on every weekend.
However, there are now a few of us at the club who can use it well, and I hope to train more people this year.
I set up the series in advance, and only expect the OOD to input the competitors and the results.
Try it out, but dont expect everone to pick it up straight away.