At Race-Trax we love a challenge and were pleased to take up the gauntlet when asked at short notice by the Centre Nautique de Morgat to demonstrate the system at the Grand Prix Ecole Navale Laser SB3 Eurocup.

Having just returned from Match Race Germany, part of the World Match Racing Tour, a very quick turnaround saw the Race-Trax team in France in action on Saturday 29th May, the second day of competition. And what a day to choose for a demo; with a 1.5 metre swell in the Bay of Douarnenez and 25+ knots gusting through the fleet mainsails were flogging and a few boats struggled to stay on their feet during the kite hoists.

With a choice of GPRS or UHF trackers it was decided that the conditions best suited the super high accuracy, fast data rates and zero latency of the UHF system. So UHF Trackers were fitted to the marks of the course and the top 8 boats in the fleet with the main control center set up on the safety boat, a 16ft sports cruiser, which in the swell made tracking easy compared to holding on!

The mornings racing was tracked and later replayed on a giant screen to all the competitors during an evening function in Morgat. The organisers from the Ecole Naval and Centre Nautique de Morgat were delighted with the system and in particular pleased to use Race-Trax to confirm a top speed on the day of 13.9 kts for Rigging Gurus skippered by Mark Richards.

We were pleased to do the demonstration and more than a little proud of again proving what can be achieved with the power and flexibility of the Race-Trax system. We are really looking forward to working with the Centre Nautique de Morgat and Ecole Naval in the future.

"this is an extremely powerful system; I'm impressed" .. The words of Peter Gilmour, Acting President of the World Match Racing Tour and world class Match Racing sailor summarising a great first outing for the all new LIVE! Race Viewer.

While Race-Trax has a huge amount of experience tracking sailing events of every description, this was the first event for the all new Race Viewer software. For the first time we were combining LIVE! second by second tracking with stylish semi 3D graphics, full race statistics and LIVE! blog. The system worked out of the box with the very first Flight being streamed to the internet for remote Viewers to follow the racing, as it happened, using Race Viewer.

This gave us the opportunity to ask for feedback from the many sailing enthuisiasts who downloaded Race Viewer and we are really grateful to all those who responded. There were some great suggestions and we were able to incorporate many of them during the event ready for the finals so it was particularly disappointing after a frustrating week with light and flukey winds to have no sailing on the final day.

However that's sailing. In the meantime the Race-Trax system proved its worth. When racing started the Race-Trax data was delivered LIVE! to the large display screens across the festival site as well as to internet users who had downloaded and installed Race Viewer.

The LIVE! data had a truly global reach with Viewers in Australia, UK, Germany and the USA being streamed the action as it happened. Later in the day during the live TV broadcast Race-Trax supplied all the data to keep the World Match Race Tour live blog live.

Don’t forget selected Race Replay Files from the Round Robin and all the Quarter Finals are available for download now.   

Version 1.3.36 of Race Viewer is now available.

This new version has the following changes;

fixes a glitch with the display of Windward mark laylines

added an M in font of the Match numbers on the boats labels (Requested by Craig Mitchell WMRT Tour Director)

removed references to the no longer required Pre Event file

added zooming levels to the number keys

We hope you enjoy using Race Viewer and please keep the feedback coming.

 It was a beautiful day for the spectators at Match Race Germany but not so good for the sailor’s with a lack of wind delaying the start and leading to light and flukey conditions all day. Nonetheless for the enthusiast the conditions produced some enthralling match racing from the worlds best skippers. And Race-Trax was there to cover all the Quarter Finals LIVE!.

When racing started the Race-Trax data was delivered LIVE! to the large display screens across the festival site as well as to internet users who had downloaded and installed Race Viewer.

The LIVE! data had a truly global reach with Viewers in Australia, UK, Germany and the USA being streamed the action as it happened. Later in the day during the live TV broadcast Race-Trax supplied all the data to keep the World Match Race Tour live blog live.

A big thank you must go to all our Viewers who gave us feedback. We have done our best to include as many of your suggestions as possible and we will have another version of Race Viewer available for the finals.

We are really looking forward to sharing a great day’s racing with you tomorrow !

Don’t forget the Race Replay Files for the Quarter Finals are available for download now. 

At Race-Trax we have a mission to turn sailing into a spectator sport, which means you, the spectator, are our most important customer. Race Viewer provides a complete model of the racing LIVE! or post event Replay including Start Sequences, Penalty flags and Race Blog. We aim to make Race-Viewer the tracking tool of choice for the serious sailing enthusiast whether a fan, racer, race officer or offcial.  Our challenge is to provide great functionality and powerful features with ease of use.

There has been a great response from Match Racing fans at Match Race Germany. We have had a large number of Viewers who were invited to provide feedback and our thanks go to everybody who responded. 

As a result of the feedback we have simplified the download and install process, improved zooming and navigation around the screen and fixed some minor bugs. Also some Users, especially in Asia and Australia, have experienced problems logging on LIVE! with Errors SR015 and PN010. This is due to differences in Regional Settings specifically to do with 12 and 24 hour clock settings. The new version fixes these problems and as a temporary fix the problem can be overcome by adjusting your Regional Settings to English (United Kingdom). To do this go to Control Panel then choose Regional Setting.

The new version is available for download now and please keep those comments coming.

Finally a couple of important messages;

IMPORTANT When installing Race Viewer you may get a message saying;
"Error Creating File Access is denied. Would you like to continue"

This means the file already exists and is in use. It is safe to click OK and continue with the installation. The reason this message appears is that some versions of Windows do not have all the file Race Viewer needs so they have to be included. If the file already exists on your system then that is a good thing.

IMPORTANT Race Files are compressed ZIP files and you have to extract them. Once downloaded please chose Extract All Files and when asked which directory to extract file to please enter c:\