Friday, August 10, 2007

We Have The Technology

There's been some whining in some quarters recently about the ability or willingness of organizers of major regattas to post results and news about their events on-line in a prompt manner. (Not here of course. I never whine about regatta organizers.)

So let's give kudos (and smarties and M&Ms too) to Malletts Bay Boat Club, host of the 2007 US Laser Nationals who have someone on the finish boat posting live updates about action on the water today and who by 2pm had already posted some of the results of today's races while other races are still going on.

Way to go Malletts Bay.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tillerman,

That is a nice enhancement. I imagine in a decade boats will be fitted with GPS transponders or RFID chips and scoring will be done in real-time with no human intervention necessary. Perhaps this is already done at world and national regattas, much like the small fob on your shoe at large running races these days.

What did they serve for lunch?

Best wishes,
-Kristjan

Tillerman said...

There is talk of using GPS transponders to monitor the start line, spot boats OCS, maybe let them know with a red light on the unit...

The running analogy is a good one.

Don't know what they had for lunch. i wasn't there. I hope not Uncrustables.

PeconicPuffin said...

I had a related conversation with some in the windsurfing trade a few months ago. My summary was "it's not 2000, it's two thousand frickin' seven. If you can't get your head out of the 1980's then please step aside."

Anonymous said...

On the positive side, the folks doing the Etchells North Americans this spring in Galveston Bay were prompt at getting out results; I think a transcript of the radio commentary was posted in something close to real time, or at least within a couple of hours of the event.

Anonymous said...

I was the 'someone on the finish boat'. Follow this link if you want to see how we did it:

http://www.mbbc-vt.org/Events/LaserNationals07/how.htm

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