I am from a small Victorian club (Lagoon Boat Club) and we are looking for new handicapping software as our old software is very dated and recently the laptop it was on died.
I have tried to set up Sailwave, but got totally overwhemled. We race a mix of keel boats using personal handicaps that adjust with the skippers success or not, but cannot seem to get that to work.
One reason seems to be there is no handicapping system that accomadates that, all systems appear to want you to nominate a boats class. The second is I just don’t seem to be able to apply any sort of handicapping system to our anyway
I’m sure this has been asked before, but I can’t even track that down in your very extensive files and user group
What do people suggest
Thanks in advance
Pat Butler
Hi Pat,
Firstly welcome to the Sailwave User Group, your friendly support network
Sailwave can be configured for most scoring needs and has progressive scoring functionality as an option RYA NHC & Irish Sailing ECHO. These change the rating/handicap on a race by race basis. Don’t be put off by the names, they are used for personal handicapping as well…
They might be suitable for your needs or using an external spreadsheet your club personal handicap mechanism. Please can you give some more information on how your club personal handicaps get adjusted?
FYI - the handicap system to be used is selected from the Rating system tab of Scoring System, this can be accessed via the button labelled so in the rows of icons.
I look forward to helping you achieve what you need.
Kind regards,
Huw
Hi Pat,
Welcome - I’m sure Sailwave will do all you want it to do. And once you have started using it you will find it very easy to use. I appreciate if you are starting from scratch as with most things it can seem a little daunting. But have you tried experimenting with the Examples that are included with the install. Once you have played with them you should be able to adapt to your personal requirements
You can find the example Sailwave files by clicking File on menu bar then selecting Open New Series and in the list of folder is one called Examples; click on it and you will then see several example Sailwave files. Select an appropriate handicap one. The one with NHC in the file name uses the progressive handicapping functionality in Sailwave. Which change sthe rating on a race by race basis, it calculates a new rating for the next race in the series based on the information on the races already completed. NOTE you need one more race in the series than will be sailed so Sailwave when it does the calculations has somewhere to place the rating/handicap for the next race.
There are two modes to NHC calculations; one is interanl where all the code is part of Sailwave executable and the second mode uses an external Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
Thanks I found them, but still had to give our boats a rating. I used the multiplier our old software used i.e. my boat is 0.667 and it seemed to give a fair result. But wondering how I apportion new ratings in Sailwave? Am I on the right track? Also can u tell me what is the difference between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ mode please?
Hi Pat,
Internal mode all calculations have been hard coded into Sailwave executable and external mode uses an external Excel spreadsheet template which is in the same folder as the Sailwave executable.
A few Sailwave users have taken the Excel template and with help have modified, a copy, to suit their own rating adjustment algorithms.
It is possible to manually change a competitor rating on a race by race basis. To do this double click t he race cell fro the competitor in question and then select the rating tab and you can enter a new rating for the race and set it for all subsequent races until changed again if that is appropriate.
How have you been adjusting competitor ratings previously?
We had an old program called Spray which used Microsoft Access. Our computer died and we liked the idea of not having to buy the Microsoft suite by using Sailwave. Spray automatically adjusted ratings to reflect a skippers success or otherwise which is what I’m hoping Sailwave will do. My biggest question ATM is what sort of numbers to use for the rating. Is it a number less than one as it was in Spray or something else
Hi Pat,
Thank you for letting me know the system, Spray, that you were using previously. It is a scoring system I have not heard of previously.
Sailwave can use ratings the are numerically smaller than one, i.e. 0.789, or ones larger than 1. The equation for converting from an elapsed time or real clock finish time to a corrected time is different depending on the rating system being used. Sailwave has several rating systems built in as well as the option to use a custom equation. The ratings can be viewed on the Ratings tab of Scoring system. If you hover a mouse over each rating system and info box pops up, for a short period, which shows the equation being used by each option - many of the options actually use exactly the same equation!
THe major rating systems are either something like RYA PY (AS PY aka Victoria PY) or PHRF; the latter is used usually for non-dinghy racing.
If you have a copy of your Spray system that you would like to send me I am happy to have a look at it and hopefully set-up a Sailwave file equivalent for you to have as a starter.
Thanks so much for your help. I can’t get Spray to work on my computer ATM, I keep getting Visual Basic errors, but I have attached it anyway to this email
As an experiment I am re-scoring our last series using sailwave and for race 2 I got a strange outcome for series points, first got one point and second two as I would expect, but then the other two competitors got huge points. See screen capture below. Why would this be happening?
I think I’ve solved that question, but now I can see the rating is not being applied to the boats, hence the draw in race #3. I presume that is because I have used the example from the download
How do I get a rating to work, and also then for the rating to adjust with the relative success of the boat please
I’m sure that Huw will respond soon, but the attached file has a couple changes. I set the base rating to 0.5 and selected the RYA NHC rating system using the Internal mode.
The Sailwave file you attached earlier had two problems from my perspective:
the rating system being used is Texel which I think is not appropriate rating system for you
only R1 had a rating for each boat and no default rating
Peter’s modified version of your file made the two changes needed to configure the series so that a progressive rating system (RYA NHC) was being used.
There is a second progressive rating system built in to Sailwave is Irish Sailing ECHO. The differences are the algorithm used to calculate the next race rating for each competitor. As I mentioned previously it might be possible, using external mode of one of these two progressive rating systems, to create your own Excel file to implement the the progressive rating algorithm you have been using in your previous scoring system, Spray. But that then still needs a Microsoft licence which you are trying to get away from. I have heard a rumour that it might be possible to use LibreOffice Calc, but I do not know if it is true and if true what was needed to make it work.
Something to consider is the functionality available in Sailwave to score using more than one rating system concurrently. The functionality is ‘Aliases’, which creates a copy of each competitor and these ‘aliased’ competitors can have a different rating system used for calculating the results. One only has to enter finish data once for each competitor and the data is copied by Sailwave to the appropriate ‘aliased’ competitor. I once set-up a Sailwave file that scored competitors under 4 different rating systems using the competitor rating appropriate to each rating system. The results from all rating systems are calculated when the score series button is clicked and can all be published at the same time.
I look forward to continuing helping you to make use of Sailwave.
Kind regards,
Huw
If you are following this thread, Pat sent me by email his Microsoft Access application MDB file. I have been able to open it and see what tables are being used. Unfortunately, the application references tables in another Microsoft Access application MDB file.
From what I have seen, it appears that the Microsoft Access MDB file I was sent is the interface to the results entry and results for the day that has read access to information stored in the referenced MDB.
The referenced MDB file appears to be storing:
a club membership database
who is entered for what events/series
what events are in what series
what rating/handicap values are used for competitors under two different rating systems
etc.
The personal handicap element appears to be based on BCH (Back Calculated Handicap). BCH is the handicap that would have been needed to come equal first on corrected time.
Kind regards,
Huw
That file you sent me seems to work very well, but what I can’t work out is how you get it to show the rating and therefore the rating changing. I’d like to be able to monitor that. When I put in new times the ratings disappeared and were replaced with the finishing positions (see file attached)
