Yacht Races without a Committee Boat!

Does your yacht club struggle to get qualified volunteers to supply a committee boat and act as race officers? The job can be complex and sometimes thankless. At the Tiddly Cove Yacht Club, Most of our members are racers themselves. They want to participate not manage.

When setting out the design of the app, we broke it into several parts.

• Creating and Managing Marks
• Defining a race.
• User/Boat Data
• Counting down the start, including multiple starts for different divisions
• Recording start and finish times
• Tracking over early (On Course Side) starts and applying a penalty.
• Calculating elapsed times
• Calculating corrected time by the PHRF rule

Creating and Managing marks

Befor you can define a race you need marks. The app allows you to use the locations of physical objects such as buoys, piers or natural features. Each mark has a name and a Lat/Long position. Start and Finish lines each require two marks, left (port) and right (Starboard). Course marks are single points. The Mark Manger page allows adding, deleting and editing marks. New marks can be created from your phones current loaction, from a position on a map, or by typing the coordinates. Marks belonging to a club are stored online, and can only be edited by a club administrator. Private users can store marks on their phones.

Defining a Club Race

The following information is required to fully define a race:

• Race Name
• Description
• Web link (optional)
• A starting line, consisting of two marks
• A finish line, which can be the same as the startline
• Intermediate marks (optional)
• A date and time for the first warning. This is in the time zone where the start line is located.
• Number of starts (the app allows up to 10)
• Divisions within each start (up to 10)
• Over Early Penalty Multiplier. The penalty is (seconds early)x(multiplier)
• Time between starts, minimum being five minutes

Boat Data

Boats and users are in the same record. The data needed is:

• User email
• Password
• Skipper
• Boat Name
• Sail Number
• Boat Model/Class
• LOA
• PHRF rating
• Yacht Club Membership
• Boat Cell Number

Tracking participating boat locations

The app uses the GNSS location data that all modern smartphones make available, at a special navigational accuracy. Testing has shown accuracy in the 3 meter range out on the water. It is recommended that the phone be muunted on a bracket at the wheel pedestal or the aft end of the cockpit. The app records the time when the start line and finish lines are crossed. This data is recorded online to the clubs database. There is no limit to the number of boats in a race. Each boat must join the race with the app, at least two minutes before the first warning. This is the equivalent of the VHF checkin we are used to.

Starting Countdown

When a Boat joins a timed raced, the countdown starts immediately. An admin can also start the count on his own phone, where he has additional functions such as Postpone 10 minutes (can be used multiple times) and Abandon Race. An admin can also see the positions of all the boats in the race on his own screen. The count down is as follows:

• Timer starts showing time to first starting HH:MM:ss format.
• The rounding direction flag shows
• At five minutes your Division flag shows and a hon sounds
• At four minutes the Warning flag shows and a beep sounds
• At one minute the warming flag disapears and a beep sounds
• At ten seconds a verbal countdown starts
• At the start a horn sounds
• Individual start times are recorded when each boat crosses the start line

Over Early

If a boat is over early an error sound will play. A penalty will be applied to the elapsed time according to the race settings. Ther is no need for arecall.

Elapsed Time

Crossing the finish line, a TADA sound plays. When a boat crosses the finish line, which is only checked for if it has already crossed the start, the time is recorded, based on the official start time. If the actual start is before the official time the over early penalty is applied.

Corrected Time

This is calculated based on the Boat’s recorded PHRF rating. If another rating system is used the race admin can export the results to a scoring program.

The Results

Each user can only see his own results. Club Admins can get the full race results for posting to a web site.

Compliance

As in any rules based system there is some room for abuse. Since the app records the position of the phone, there is a small window for cheating by moving the phone aft at the start and forward at the finish line. On a forty-foot boat travelling at 5 knots that is about four seconds. If the phone is kept in place the repeatability is withing one second.

What this means to a Yacht Club

Races, even large ones can be run with minimal staff. In fact, the committee boat could place the marks, update their GPS positions with the phone, then sail in the race. Since all signals and “flags” are handeled by the app, most of the admin work is done before and after the race.

An example: The Bowen Island Race

The annual Bowen Island race has as many as 120 boats all in a single start, although there are many divisions. The start line is very long, and accurately accounting for boats over early is nearly impossible. Then boats trickle to the finish beginning three hours later. The committee has to wait for each boat and record the time. When several boats arrive at the finish along side each other, some guesswork is involved in arriving at finish times. I know this from experience. Active Race can record multiple boats even in a dead heat. Uf i ran this race with Active Race I would run the start line between identifiable points on the island and the opposing mainland shore, completely obviating the need for race marks.

Costs

Since the Active Race app requires only hardware virtually everybody has, the cost of operation is minimal. Our intention is to charge an annual subscription, which includes support, to each club based on the size of its active membership, and each user a very small annual fee. We are open to discussion on this point.