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:\ 

 

 

Challenging conditions for the sailors on the first day of Match Race Germany with light and shifty winds producing some closely fought slow motion duels.

Race-Trax were there to cover it with the afternoon session being streamed LIVE! to users who had previously downloaded Race Viewer software.

Race Viewer gives a complete picture of the race enabling the viewer to watch a whole flight or concentrate on individual matches within a flight. With high quality semi 3D graphics, extensive race statistics, penalty flags and a race blog, Race Viewer in the next best thing to being there.

Race Viewer and the three flights from this afternoons racing are available to download. To join in just follow the simple steps below;

1 Register or Login

2 Download and install the latest version of Race Viewer v 1.4.34 from the Downloads Section

3 Run Race Viewer then from the menu select Mode LIVE! (E-Server)

4 Log on to E-Server. From the menu select File LogOn to E-Server or double click the Status Frame traffic lights

To get you started with Match Racing their is a 10 minute video tutorial available here

We are looking forward to a great day of action tomorrow and hope you can join us LIVE! and if you have any comments we would love to hear from you.

 

 

Hectic day tracking exciting sport of team racing.

The annual Wilson Trophy British Open Team Racing Championship hosted by West Kirby Sailing Club is a remarkable event on many levels. Beyond the mere facts that the event, now in its sixty-first year, is still consistently attracting the cream of the international team racing community, the sheer logistical challenges of staging this event set it apart from any other.

Thirty-two six person teams, more than three hundred individual races to be started, finished and accurately scored, an instant online results service, a fleet of evenly matched colour coded Firefly dinghies to be rigged, launched and maintained throughout the regatta, on the water judging from a team of twenty-five international umpires who had collectively travelled more than seventy-thousand miles to attend, live expert commentary on the action and lakeside grandstand seating to cater for the spectators.

And now we add in the possibility of LIVE! Tracking with Race-Trax. With sub metre accuracy and instant second by second updates Race-Trax  provides instant, super accurate race information which can be broadcast simultaneously to the Race Office, the Web, to TV and a multitude of other on-site and remote spectator options.

On Day Two Race-Trax trackers were fitted to one flight of boats and the marks of the course Competitors had an early start with racing getting underway at eight o’clock sharp. Conditions out on the marine lake at West Kirby were close to ideal with clearing skies and around eight to ten knots of breeze. A full days tracking followed every sixth race of the Swiss League format and a total 150 races were completed in the day. With such a complicated format and with so much happening on the water at any one time the objective was to understand how best to turn the tracking data into meaningful information for spectators, commentators and the thousands of fans who would like to follow the event over the internet.

“It was a fantastic event to be involved in and we learnt a lot. There certainly are a number of challenges but we are confident that with the flexibility and the power of the Race-Trax system we can provide the perfect solution for Team Racing and the Wilson Trophy. The world needs to know about this and Race-Trax could be central to doing it.” Commented Mike Anderson-Brown from Race-Trax.

A selection of Race files from the day will be available for download soon.

Race-Trax would also like to thank West Kirby Sailing Club for their wonderful hospitality.

The Wilson Trophy, hosted by West Kirby Sailing Club, Wirral UK, is one of the biggest and oldest team racing events in the world and no description of the event can beat the words from the Wilson Trophy website 

"200 Olympic-class sailors compete annually on West Kirby's marine amphitheatre in one of the World's favourite events for three days in May.

Five thousand spectators and thousands on the web follow 300 short, sharp frenzied races in three-boat teams jostling on an area of a football field to earn the coveted title: "Wilson Trophy Champion".

For this is team racing; this is the balletic cousin of a venerable sport.

Frantic and frenetic, the sailors spin breath-taking skills caressing their boats through a needle's eye within a hair's breadth of touching at grand-prix speeds.

All powered by nature' s winds and the will-to-win. Right in front of your eyes."

The actual tracking will be the easy bit. With sub meter accuracy, second by second updates rates and instant display of the action from the water the Race-Tax system is perfectly suited to the task. The big challenge is turning the tracking data into meaningful information.

"It's no good just having images of boats on a screen" explained Mike Anderson-Brown, Commercial Director for Race-Trax " Viewers need to know who is in the boats and which matches are on the course. What we have is up to 300 races involving 32 teams using 36 boats divided into 12 flights of 3. With rolling 3 minute starts, up to 4 matches on the course at any time and teams changing boats every 12 to 15 minutes, the challenge is making it presentable and understandable so everyone knows exactly what's happening, as it happens. We have done this for Match Racing and now it's time to turn our attention to the exciting sport of Team Racing"

That is why Race-Trax is working with the organisers this year, with the aim of defining a system and so develop a dedicated Team Racing module to complement our Fleet and Match Racing modules. What better place to start than the Wilson !

The event will not be available live but we are aiming to make a selection of races available for replay.

If the essence of match racing is intense head-to-head competition between skilled and talented sailors in fast boats on short courses, then the Rolex OCR Women’s Match Racing delivered in every respect,  from the first flight to the last; and all captured by Race-Trax.

The schedule was challenging with potentially 166 matches in 51 flights to get through in 6 days it went to the wire with every match sailed. And every result counted. 24 teams from 17 nations competed for places in Bronze, Silver and Gold fleets from the first Round Robin before either progressing through the stages to the final or confirming their Standings through fleet Sail Off’s.

With results rolling in every few minutes and Flights starting on the final windward rounding of the last match of the previous Flight Principle Race Officer Ron Drucker, and his team, did a great job of keeping to schedule.

The story of the event has to be the final between Lucy Macgregor GBR and Anna Tunnicliffe USA. The British team had not lost a match throughout the regatta and kept up their 100% record by going 2-0 up in the first to 3 final. But, the American team showed a never say die attitude and fought back to take the next two matches and level at 2-2.

In the final match Macgregor got off to a strong start and reached the final mark 18 metres ahead of her opponent. On the Signal boat result sheets were being filled in and final standings allocated but Race-Trax showed Tunnicliffe gaining rapidly and within 300m she had gained an overlap. With 300 meters to go it was neck and neck with Macgregor just in command until Tunnicliffe gybed away and caught a wave powering her ahead of Macgregor who then gybed behind enabling Tunnicliffe to take the match and the Gold Medal.

As you would expect the whole drama was captured with precision accuracy by Race-Trax and is available for download, or you can watch the whole final match in 2 minutes here.

 

But it is not only the competitors, coaches and fans who benefit from Race-Trax as expressed by Ron Drucker PRO for the Rolex OCR Women’s Match Racing

The Race-Trax system was extremely useful. With trackers on the marks I knew exact distances and, vitally, if the marks or Signal Boat were moving. The system also allowed my team to be better prepared for close mark roundings and finishes. Having Race-Trax on board was very, very helpful.

Click here to go to the Downloads section but first if you are not registered then please register now.