Excerpt from the Daily Telegraph's (UK daily broadsheet) Connected (technology) 'over to you' section this week----->
Sailing out of technical trouble
For sailing races, and maybe other events, finishers are awarded points in ascending order. In a series of races, not all entrants take part in all races, so I need to compare the list of finishers with the list of entrants, so that those who did not start or finish are awarded maximum marks. Is there a way in Excel, or other spreadsheet, to compare the two lists of entrants and finishers so that these can be identified. Boat sail numbers do not follow any sequence.
Stephen Green, via email
There is an excellent sailing results program written by Bob McPherson. It is a completely free Excel-based utility, which can cope with almost all aspects of yacht/dinghy racing. It is available from many sites including that of the Royal Temple Yacht Club in Ramsgate, Kent. Go to www.rtyc.com and click on the Links button.
Ian Braithwaite, ian-braithwaite@totalise.co.uk
I suggest Stephen tries Sailwave Sailing Scoring Software available from www.sailwave.com. This free software has been written by Colin Jenkins, who is himself a sailor. In my opinion it is the best answer to producing sailing results; it does everything you need. Colin regularly updates the software to take account of the latest changes to RRS as well as adding new features. The program produces printed reports and can be customised to generate HTML, allowing you to publish results on your club web site.
Hugh Davies, boatsheds@freeuk.com
Create a table with yacht details, finishers and results. In finishers only place the final position such as 6 or 15 otherwise leave it blank. At the foot of the finishers column create a single cell with the formula =MAX(finishers) having named the column up to that point but not including it "finishers". Name the cell "Maxscore". In the results column enter the formula in the first cell =IF(B2>0,B2,Maxscore) where the first yacht is in A2, the result is in B2, and the formula is in C2. Copy this formula down the table to the row above Maxscore. You can the use Data Sort and the results column to sort your table for you.
john@hootonj.freeserve.co.uk
One simple way round this problem would be to create a spreadsheet for the series of races. The first sheet should be called Overall Series and would contain a list of all sail numbers in Column A, and then a further column for each race in the series (eg columns B,C,D,E,F,G for a six-race series) with two final columns for total points and an overall position. Then add a single sheet for each individual race in the series. On each race sheet, there should be two columns: Sail Number and Position.
In the column on the Overall Series sheet corresponding to the race, use the following formula: =IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP
(A4,Race1,2,FALSE))
=TRUE,(MAX(Race1Points)
+1),VLOOKUP(A4,Race1,2,
FALSE)) where A4 is the cell with the sail number, Race1 is the range of cells showing the sail number and position for the first race, and Race1Points is the range of cells only showing the positions.
This compares the sail numbers that finished and their positions, transfers them to the Overall Series sheet and adds in the maximum points for all other sail numbers that did not finish, i.e.: number of finishers +1. The total points for each sail number can then be added up for the series, and ranked in position order.
Neil Douglas, Njdouglas98@yahoo.co.uk
I have written a program that does all the calculations for sailing results using Access. Details are available on www.halsraceresults.com where you can order a free CD of a demonstration version. The full thing, which can calculate and store the results of all races sailed by several fleets of boats over an entire season, is available for £40 per year licence fee.
Peter Hopford, Peter@hopford.com
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