March 25, 2014

With technology enhancing our lives and making it better (with some dubious exceptions), it's no wonder that yacht racing would get in the act. Ray Irvine of Jibeset race management software has asked for some help from sailors in this Saturday's SSS Corinthian Race.

"Some of the fun of racing is comparing a boat’s performance against others in the same race – understand where ground was lost or gained and the effect of where one goes on the Bay – always good for a bar discussion.

"To make this useful, all the GPS tracks have to be in single system so they can be viewed together for easy comparison.

"Often getting the GPS track from the recording device into a single system is far too complex to make the effort worthwhile. This involves getting the GPS data out of the recording device, possibly doing a format conversion from some funky priority format to a standard format, upload it to a central system, and tell it which piece of the track to use and which boat and race this track is for.

"BAMA has done a considerable amount of work for their races by providing a manual (done by them) process for taking a GPS track via email, uploading it, and including it in their race track display.

"Two years ago Jibeset built on this by removing the manual work involved in selecting the piece of track of interest, attaching the track to a particular boat in a given race, and replaying the tracks of a selected group of boats in various ways, thus providing a tool to allow the racer to upload the track directly to Jibeset.

"This did not solve the issues around getting the GPS track from the recording device to the Jibeset system – it was still too complex for many to bother with.

"Over the last several months, Jibeset has been testing a more integrated approach using a smartphone as the recording device to remove many of these issues.

"Jibeset would like to conduct a wider beta test during the Corinthian Race this coming weekend – 10 to 15 boats across a variety of smartphone types – to continue to understand the operational issues."

Here's what you need to participate:

• Smartphone with real GPS
• Smartphone charger on your boat

If you're interested in being part of this test, or bring your smartphone to the SSS skippers meeting this Wednesday, 1930 hours, at Oakland Yacht Club in Alameda.