Hi RK,
Firstly, Happy New Year and all best for 2026 and apologies for slow response.
I sympathise with you and merging. I collate results from up to 13 events with up to 400 competitors over the course of the year. The rank from each individual event is the results for that event, I am not merging all the individual race results from each event.
The problems I have are:
- Entrants are not consistent in entering their name in terms of spelling or in terms of known/first name and family/surname being first or last.
- They can change sail number per event or enter with one and then at registration change it.
- I have to monitor each helm and crew pairing as the results are for a specific helm & crew partnership.
- Check they are members of class at the date of the event.
Unfortunately I have not found a 100% solution for what I do. I check for same sail number but duplicates could be valid if helm is competing in an event with different crew or vice versa. I also check, like you, for same or close helm and crew names.
Question:
Is it possible for each entry in the series to be given a unique identifier? If so you could put it one of the fields used for matching and use that for the merge process? Use an alternative Sailwave field for the field you chose if the data is needed.
In response to your questions:
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possibly answered by my question to you above.
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you can use more than one tick box for the merge. So, for example, you could tick both class and sail number.
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the tick boxes are valid for the first two merge options but not the third/last one.
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competitors to consistently enter their names in format and case. In your case it seems that entrants are consistently using the same class and sail number, which if correct is a great helm.
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First merge option tries to match entries based on the selected tick boxes and when a match is made, all the individual race results from the event being merged are appended to that class / sail number for example.
Second merge option creates a new race by default or if the check box beside ‘Merge in to competitors carried forward field’ is checked and either puts the event overall series rank or the overall series Nett points into the appropriate filed depending if the box labelled ‘Use series points instead of series rank’ is checked.
Third merge option appends the competitors in the file being ‘imported / merged in to’ and tries to match/merge the results with races already in the file they are being ‘imported / merged in to’ and if races are not matched they are created.
Having looked at the file you attached and the way you wrote your post, you will be using merge option 1. The choice between merge option 1 and merge option 2 depends on what the Organising Authority want and how the Notice of Series has been written.
Merge option 2 is used, when an event has separate Sailwave files for Qualifying Series and a Final Series, where the Q-series rank or Nett Points are carried forward. This merge option has to be used if the Q-series rank is carried forward and usually the value is put in the ‘Carried forward’ field not a new race, so the value is added to the F-series Net Points. That is the carried forward value cannot be discarded. It is possible to put the carried forward value from Q-series in as a new race, but one then has to mark that race non-discardable (usual) and also adjust the discard profile. So much easier and much less error prone to put carried forward value in the ‘Carried forward’ field.
I hope that all makes sense.
PS - Do you know Anne Vieburg? She is a Brazilian Sailwave user I support quite frequently.
Kind regards,
Huw