Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

Imported from Yahoo
1

Dear Sailwave users,

we're currently evaluating Sailwave, but we have a snaglet.

We have a rather minimal committee boat setup here we run starts from
a Dory, but do all our finishes from a race box in the clubhouse. However
with increasing spread of handicap ranges we also need to do average
lap races. We don't want to leave our expanding junior fleet out for hours
to freeze:-)

The only way to do this, as far as I can see is to time all the boats
through the finish on "Lap 1", which is not a complete lap. Then calculate
the average lap time on the remaining (complete) laps,and multiply by
the appropriate factor. Finally we add the time to lap 1 to this total,
giving
an elapsed time for the complete race. For boats that did the max
number of laps this is of course the same as recorded elapsed time, for
the rest it includes added "average" laps which don't include the time up
the first leg or two. Bit complicated to do, but fair.

The problem we have is that, as far as I can see, Sailwave doesn't have a
facility for "ignore 1st lap in elapsed times", nor does it have a
facility for
importing race times from a CSV file. The former wold be really neat, but
probably of zero value to other users unless anyone else runs their races
like us, but the latter would at least enable me to knock up a custom
spreadsheet to import the data from and I see its on the to do list - any
thoughts on when?

Any thoughts on how either of these can be achieved? I could easily have
missed something obvious, I'm just running an Eval...

Jim Champ

2

Jim,
I am afraid that the only correct way to do this is to have a committee boat
finish, so that you have whole laps, we do this at our club OK, the only
problem is getting the timekeeper out on the committee boat partic. in the
winter.
Anything else is an approximation,
Cheers,
Geoff

3

Hi Jim,

On your 2nd point - importing places/points/codes/times from CSV is on the
todo list and I'll get to it soon; a lot of users want it so they can import
legacy series into Sailwave or interface to Sailwave from data collection
software.

Regards,
Colin J

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Champ [mailto:jimc@hjones.cix.co.uk]
Sent: 05 November 2001 14:03
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

Dear Sailwave users,

we're currently evaluating Sailwave, but we have a snaglet.

We have a rather minimal committee boat setup here we run starts from
a Dory, but do all our finishes from a race box in the clubhouse. However
with increasing spread of handicap ranges we also need to do average
lap races. We don't want to leave our expanding junior fleet out for hours
to freeze:-)

The only way to do this, as far as I can see is to time all the boats
through the finish on "Lap 1", which is not a complete lap. Then calculate
the average lap time on the remaining (complete) laps,and multiply by
the appropriate factor. Finally we add the time to lap 1 to this total,
giving
an elapsed time for the complete race. For boats that did the max
number of laps this is of course the same as recorded elapsed time, for
the rest it includes added "average" laps which don't include the time up
the first leg or two. Bit complicated to do, but fair.

The problem we have is that, as far as I can see, Sailwave doesn't have a
facility for "ignore 1st lap in elapsed times", nor does it have a
facility for
importing race times from a CSV file. The former wold be really neat, but
probably of zero value to other users unless anyone else runs their races
like us, but the latter would at least enable me to knock up a custom
spreadsheet to import the data from and I see its on the to do list - any
thoughts on when?

Any thoughts on how either of these can be achieved? I could easily have
missed something obvious, I'm just running an Eval...

Jim Champ

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sailwave
http://www.sailwave.com/

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4

Hi Jim,

When Sailwave detects differences in the number of laps it auto jumps into
average lap mode. To avoid absurdities 'average' lap times are actually
calculated as extrapolated lap times based on the max number of laps that
any one boat did.

Something I have been toying with is the idea of a time penalty time that
gets added to the elapsed time before calculating the corrected time. In
the 'average-lap' context the penalty would be added after modifying
everybody's time based on the max number of laps. Which means your partial
lap then becomes a 'penalty'.

The maths is:-

NormalisedElapsed = (Elapsed * Max Laps / Laps) + Penalty
Corrected = SomeFunctionOf(NormalisedElapsed)

Which is presumably exactly what you do now...? Sailwave currently does the
above without the "+ Penalty" part.

Regards,
Colin

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Champ [mailto:jimc@hjones.cix.co.uk]
Sent: 05 November 2001 14:03
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

Dear Sailwave users,

we're currently evaluating Sailwave, but we have a snaglet.

We have a rather minimal committee boat setup here we run starts from
a Dory, but do all our finishes from a race box in the clubhouse. However
with increasing spread of handicap ranges we also need to do average
lap races. We don't want to leave our expanding junior fleet out for hours
to freeze:-)

The only way to do this, as far as I can see is to time all the boats
through the finish on "Lap 1", which is not a complete lap. Then calculate
the average lap time on the remaining (complete) laps,and multiply by
the appropriate factor. Finally we add the time to lap 1 to this total,
giving
an elapsed time for the complete race. For boats that did the max
number of laps this is of course the same as recorded elapsed time, for
the rest it includes added "average" laps which don't include the time up
the first leg or two. Bit complicated to do, but fair.

The problem we have is that, as far as I can see, Sailwave doesn't have a
facility for "ignore 1st lap in elapsed times", nor does it have a
facility for
importing race times from a CSV file. The former wold be really neat, but
probably of zero value to other users unless anyone else runs their races
like us, but the latter would at least enable me to knock up a custom
spreadsheet to import the data from and I see its on the to do list - any
thoughts on when?

Any thoughts on how either of these can be achieved? I could easily have
missed something obvious, I'm just running an Eval...

Jim Champ

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sailwave
http://www.sailwave.com/

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5

I must admit I don't fully understand that. It is , however, rather simpler
then what I do!

What I'm aiming to do is:-
Time the partial lap up to when the user gets to the finish line the first
time (Lap1Time). Calculate an average length of lap based on the number
of laps and time taken from there to the end of the race. Multiply by Max
laps to get a rational Normalised Elapsed time for the race which
excludes the first leg(s),and then add the LapTime to the total to get te
final Normalised Elapsed time, which in the case of boats that do max
laps will be the same as the recorded elapsed time of course. One
advantage of this approach is that a poor start doesn't influence the
added time for the normalising laps.

My formula (which could probably be improved) is as follows. The cucial
bit is that the Lap1Time is excluded from the averaging process...

NormalisedElapsed = (Elapsed - Lap1Time) / CompleteLaps *
MaxCompleteLaps + Lap1Time

Thanks for thoughts so far...

regards, Jim C

···

On 5 Nov 2001, at 15:06, Colin Jenkins wrote:

Something I have been toying with is the idea of a time penalty time that
gets added to the elapsed time before calculating the corrected time. In
the 'average-lap' context the penalty would be added after modifying
everybody's time based on the max number of laps. Which means your partial
lap then becomes a 'penalty'.

The maths is:-

NormalisedElapsed = (Elapsed * Max Laps / Laps) + Penalty
Corrected = SomeFunctionOf(NormalisedElapsed)

Which is presumably exactly what you do now...? Sailwave currently does the
above without the "+ Penalty" part.

6

Hi Jim,

The formulas are the same; I was just separating the total elapsed time into
"Elapsed" and "Penalty" where my "Elapsed" is the time for the number of
complete laps and my "Penalty" is the time for the partial lap.

You are (more sensibly) writing "Elapsed" as the total elapsed time.

so my "Elapsed" = your "Elapsed" minus your "Lap1Time"
and my "Penalty" = your "Lap1Time"

It's actually something I could add very quickly if you'd be prepared to
enter a "penalty" rather then a "partial lap time".

Regards,
Colin

···

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7

Colin & Jim,

I have looked at a lot of race results programs over the last few years and
I have only found one which attempts something similar to what Jim has
described.

The race results program that attempts to take account of the start and
finish lines being in different places, so one lap is a different length to
all the others is TopYacht.

TopYacht has a facility in its 'enhanced' version for taking account of
'Finish Line Offset', which from memory of reading the manual a long time
ago, only involved getting a time for the leading boat to cover the distance
from the last mark of the course to the finish line and then applying
relative PN's ratio of the leading boats PN to that of each other boat
finishing PN. Don't if it is handled the same way in the latest version or
differently because I have not looked at the latest version yet (officially
released November 1st).

In my view SailWave and TopYacht are the two leading race results programs
but SailWave is free and TopYacht is not. So I use SailWave and my club
uses an Excel spreadsheet written by a club member for most club things and
SailWave for things that our Excel program cannot deal with, like splitting
competitors into fleets within a single class event and then wanting overall
results and results by fleet.

I would also find a facility to deal with a part lap in the context of
'Average Lap Racing' useful. But the biggest problem I would have is making
sure the race team record the time of the part lap for all boats! But I am
looking at another program to help the race team record the lap time of each
boat be part or whole laps. Colin I know you are aware of this program
RaceDay.

Regards,
Huw Pearce
Rear Commodore & WebMaster, Datchet Water Sailing Club
www www.dwsc.co.uk <http://www.dwsc.co.uk>
e-mail sailing@dwsc.co.uk <mailto:sailing@dwsc.co.uk>

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Jenkins [mailto:colin.jenkins@match-it.com]
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 3:06 PM
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

Hi Jim,

When Sailwave detects differences in the number of laps it auto jumps into
average lap mode. To avoid absurdities 'average' lap times are actually
calculated as extrapolated lap times based on the max number of laps that
any one boat did.

Something I have been toying with is the idea of a time penalty time that
gets added to the elapsed time before calculating the corrected time. In
the 'average-lap' context the penalty would be added after modifying
everybody's time based on the max number of laps. Which means your partial
lap then becomes a 'penalty'.

The maths is:-

NormalisedElapsed = (Elapsed * Max Laps / Laps) + Penalty
Corrected = SomeFunctionOf(NormalisedElapsed)

Which is presumably exactly what you do now...? Sailwave currently does the
above without the "+ Penalty" part.

Regards,
Colin

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Champ [mailto:jimc@hjones.cix.co.uk]
Sent: 05 November 2001 14:03
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

Dear Sailwave users,

we're currently evaluating Sailwave, but we have a snaglet.

We have a rather minimal committee boat setup here we run starts from
a Dory, but do all our finishes from a race box in the clubhouse. However
with increasing spread of handicap ranges we also need to do average
lap races. We don't want to leave our expanding junior fleet out for hours
to freeze:-)

The only way to do this, as far as I can see is to time all the boats
through the finish on "Lap 1", which is not a complete lap. Then calculate
the average lap time on the remaining (complete) laps,and multiply by
the appropriate factor. Finally we add the time to lap 1 to this total,
giving
an elapsed time for the complete race. For boats that did the max
number of laps this is of course the same as recorded elapsed time, for
the rest it includes added "average" laps which don't include the time up
the first leg or two. Bit complicated to do, but fair.

The problem we have is that, as far as I can see, Sailwave doesn't have a
facility for "ignore 1st lap in elapsed times", nor does it have a
facility for
importing race times from a CSV file. The former wold be really neat, but
probably of zero value to other users unless anyone else runs their races
like us, but the latter would at least enable me to knock up a custom
spreadsheet to import the data from and I see its on the to do list - any
thoughts on when?

Any thoughts on how either of these can be achieved? I could easily have
missed something obvious, I'm just running an Eval...

Jim Champ

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sailwave
http://www.sailwave.com/

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8

Hi Huw,

Colin I know you are aware of this program RaceDay.<

Thanks for the additional comments. As I understand it RaceDay/Sailwave
could compliment each other with Sailwave doing the series scoring. I have
a todo entry to make the Sailwave series file format available to RaceDay
and indeed to anybody else that wants it.

Regards,
Colin

···

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9

I would also find a facility to deal with a part lap in the context of
'Average Lap Racing' useful. But the biggest problem I would have is making
sure the race team record the time of the part lap for all boats!

I'd be interested to know how to do that too... I think for us the
main option would be to give them the choice of either that or
committeee boat finishes:-)

Actually as we're just getting into the business of moving to
something a little more complicated than paper and calculator I'd
be interested to know how other people's experience of getting
volunteer race teams of varying computer awareness to do things
works out... Because I've worked in computer support I'm *very*
cynical about the chances of getting unwilling volunteers of varying
level of computer awareness to operate even the most user friendly
of systems - they're all user hostile to hostile users IME.

I experimented by doing entry of results directly into my laptop on
Sunday, and the first problem I hit was that when the sun came
out, with the glare on the water, the screen was quite unreadable
*anywhere* in the race box!

How do you organise using Sailwave at your clubs people? Paper
results that go to a co-ordinator, dedicated volunteer or what?

Jim C

10

It's actually something I could add very quickly if you'd be prepared to
enter a "penalty" rather then a "partial lap time".

It all depends how actually operating the results program pans out:
I've asked for feedback on that elsewhere. But the more I think
about it the more important the csv import of race results looks.
Given that ability people can readily do spreadsheet or whatever
solutions for whatever weird things they want to do to preformat the
data, leaving sailwave to handle the scoring and the other tricky
stuff... Given a csv input for it I wouldn't care *what* it was called,
penalty or partial, because the data input could be offed to a locked
down spreadsheet, and the results imported by a results co-
ordinator for the meat and processing. But in any case the
manipulation of the numbers into average lap results is fairly trivial,
the nasty bots are a) getting teh data and b) handling all teh series
info.

From the way I'm thinking now - and you folk with experience can
tell me how things work in practice for you, I reckon I'd be looking
at a paper race sheet for the folk in the box to fill out, then ask
them to input into a simple app which would handle the basic
crunching and spit out the results for the day. Teams that couldn't
cope with that could do it all by hand and pass the results on to
the co-ordinator on paper... Either way paper or FDD/email with
results as csv goes to the co-ordinator to go into Sailwave to do the
serious stuff. This is geared to a season-long club series BTW, of
course for an open event you need a competent results person told
off for the job!

Jim C

[Apologies for joining the list and immediately generating what are
probably tons of FAQ stuff, I've been using the net long enough to
know better, but next week I want to off the results taking to
someone else and go sailing...]

11

<How do you organise using Sailwave at your clubs people? Paper
results that go to a co-ordinator, dedicated volunteer or what?<

We use "OOD sheets" filled in by hand by the OOD with the elapsed times etc,
which are then picked up from the club by the "results person" to enter into
Sailwave and upload to the web site at their leisure. I don't think
Sailwave is up to being used as a direct entry mechanism as it stands... I
think there is a lot to be said for paper - especially when you have N boats
approaching the finish very close to each other...

Colin

···

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12

Jim,

At Datchet we rely principally on pencil and paper to record the start and
finish information. This is then entered into a member written Excel
application by the Sailing Secretary.

The importance of enough competent scribes and additional means of recording
finishing information was brought home at Datchet a couple of years ago. We
were running the Optimist Inlands with 200 competitors in the main fleet
split into 4 flights with 2 flights on each start. In one race the wind
died on the competitors in the first start and the filled-in from behind
bring the boats of the second start up to and into the boast of the first
start. At the finish we estimate that we finished 150 boats in 5-6 minute
time window, i.e. a boat every two to three seconds. Now when ever anyone
complains that they cannot keep up with 4 or 5 boats finishing in a minute,
I threaten them with helping me if we ever run the Optimist Inlands again
(which we are next year). We had two committee boats, one at each end of
the finish line and each finish team only missed one boat each and they were
different for each committee boat. We also had no queries from the
competitors about their recorded finish positions. Things might have been a
little more :wink: fraught if we had had to record times as well.

Regards,
Huw

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Champ [mailto:jimc@hjones.cix.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 11:06 PM
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

I would also find a facility to deal with a part lap in the context of
'Average Lap Racing' useful. But the biggest problem I would have is

making

sure the race team record the time of the part lap for all boats!

I'd be interested to know how to do that too... I think for us the
main option would be to give them the choice of either that or
committeee boat finishes:-)

Actually as we're just getting into the business of moving to
something a little more complicated than paper and calculator I'd
be interested to know how other people's experience of getting
volunteer race teams of varying computer awareness to do things
works out... Because I've worked in computer support I'm *very*
cynical about the chances of getting unwilling volunteers of varying
level of computer awareness to operate even the most user friendly
of systems - they're all user hostile to hostile users IME.

I experimented by doing entry of results directly into my laptop on
Sunday, and the first problem I hit was that when the sun came
out, with the glare on the water, the screen was quite unreadable
*anywhere* in the race box!

How do you organise using Sailwave at your clubs people? Paper
results that go to a co-ordinator, dedicated volunteer or what?

Jim C

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sailwave
http://www.sailwave.com/

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sailwave-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

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13

At big events we find that a person speaking sail numbers into a mini
cassette recorder is a useful backup. In practice you get the background
voices as well which can also be useful.

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Huw Pearce [mailto:huw.pearce@bcs.org.uk]
Sent: 06 November 2001 11:27
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

Jim,

At Datchet we rely principally on pencil and paper to record the start and
finish information. This is then entered into a member written Excel
application by the Sailing Secretary.

The importance of enough competent scribes and additional means of recording
finishing information was brought home at Datchet a couple of years ago. We
were running the Optimist Inlands with 200 competitors in the main fleet
split into 4 flights with 2 flights on each start. In one race the wind
died on the competitors in the first start and the filled-in from behind
bring the boats of the second start up to and into the boast of the first
start. At the finish we estimate that we finished 150 boats in 5-6 minute
time window, i.e. a boat every two to three seconds. Now when ever anyone
complains that they cannot keep up with 4 or 5 boats finishing in a minute,
I threaten them with helping me if we ever run the Optimist Inlands again
(which we are next year). We had two committee boats, one at each end of
the finish line and each finish team only missed one boat each and they were
different for each committee boat. We also had no queries from the
competitors about their recorded finish positions. Things might have been a
little more :wink: fraught if we had had to record times as well.

Regards,
Huw

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Champ [mailto:jimc@hjones.cix.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 11:06 PM
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

I would also find a facility to deal with a part lap in the context of
'Average Lap Racing' useful. But the biggest problem I would have is

making

sure the race team record the time of the part lap for all boats!

I'd be interested to know how to do that too... I think for us the
main option would be to give them the choice of either that or
committeee boat finishes:-)

Actually as we're just getting into the business of moving to
something a little more complicated than paper and calculator I'd
be interested to know how other people's experience of getting
volunteer race teams of varying computer awareness to do things
works out... Because I've worked in computer support I'm *very*
cynical about the chances of getting unwilling volunteers of varying
level of computer awareness to operate even the most user friendly
of systems - they're all user hostile to hostile users IME.

I experimented by doing entry of results directly into my laptop on
Sunday, and the first problem I hit was that when the sun came
out, with the glare on the water, the screen was quite unreadable
*anywhere* in the race box!

How do you organise using Sailwave at your clubs people? Paper
results that go to a co-ordinator, dedicated volunteer or what?

Jim C

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sailwave
http://www.sailwave.com/

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sailwave-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

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14

This is exactly how the results are done at Burghfield and it seems to work
fairly well. I would certainly not recommend that any race committee has
access to a computer!!

    Nygel

···

----- Original Message -----
From: Colin Jenkins <colin.jenkins@match-it.com>
To: <sailwave@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 9:04 AM
Subject: RE: [sailwave] Average Lap Racing and Separate Start/Finish

<How do you organise using Sailwave at your clubs people? Paper
results that go to a co-ordinator, dedicated volunteer or what?<

We use "OOD sheets" filled in by hand by the OOD with the elapsed times

etc,

which are then picked up from the club by the "results person" to enter

into

Sailwave and upload to the web site at their leisure. I don't think
Sailwave is up to being used as a direct entry mechanism as it stands...

I

think there is a lot to be said for paper - especially when you have N

boats

approaching the finish very close to each other...

Colin

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