Cloud software helps sailing restart
by Richard Creer 29 May 12:20 BST
Launching for the Great River Teign Adventure 2018 © TCYC
SailEvent, a new cloud-based service from Sailing Club Software, can help clubs restart their on-the-water activity. Designed originally to support club racing, SailEvent is readily repurposed for leisure sailing.
Many clubs are looking at opening up with non-competitive sailing sessions for their members. Among the recommendations in the RYA's Guidance for Restarting Sailing are to implement a booking system, review ways of signing afloat and ashore, and look at safety procedures, all in the context of maintaining social distancing. SailEvent lets club members achieve all of these with a web app on their mobile phones. First they book a sailing session online. Then they report when they actually go afloat and when they are safely ashore. Finally their phone acts as a GPS tracker to record their location while on the water. All three functions can work together or independently.
SailEvent collates information from sailors in real time and presents it on the club's dashboard. What this all means is that a sailing session can be end-to-end paperless and without physical pinch points yet still managed and monitored.
"Leisure sailing is more random than racing", observes Sailing Club Software's John Barber, "so we were pleasantly surprised to find how well it works with SailEvent."
Sailing Club Software is providing SailEvent entirely free of charge while clubs get going again. "It's our way of giving something back to our sport", states Barber. For more information and to register to use the service visit sailevent.net