gregw

Over 35 entries have been received for this Sunday's Manly Yacht Club Helly Hanson Women's Challenge - Sydney's premium female sailing event.  

Entries range through the current Farr 40 national champion,  super 30's, cruisers, classics and dinghies.  The 15 all female crews include 7 yachts and 8 access dinghies.   Yachts will be racing in 2 class (all female and female helm) with two divisions in each, with two starts so that the all female and female helm divisions will be racing against each other on the water over our club championship courses.

As we know there are 1 or 2 more entries on the way (and because we like giving the handicapper a hard time), we've extended the entry date until Friday the 22nd.   So it's not too late to get your entry in for either female helm or all female crew.   The forecast is good (aleit a little light), so see you out there for a great days racing!

http://myc.org.au/ra.../hhwc2013.shtml

Hi

The TopYacht software is widely used for processing race entries and race results in Australia.   The race entry is handled by the TY TES system which provides a web interface (for example https://www.topyacht...php?EventID=201 ) for owners to enter their boats without the need to reenter all there details each time. The TES system is developing and now has a good common database of boats, crew handicaps and even documentation that can be shared between clubs.

But when it comes to processing races, TY still requires windows desktop software, which has a number of problems for my club (myc.org.au): it requires access to the office desktop to process results; it is not extensible to handle our handicap system; and its user interface is a little dated and non intuitive.  With regards to the handicap system,  the developers of TY are very accommodating and have produced options to suite most clubs, but our pursuit handicap system is just a bit too outside the bounds of what they can easily do, plus we want web entry and an easier to use user interface.

So I have been developing an application based on google spreadsheets that interfaces to the TY TES system for race entries and provides processing of multiple handicaps for races series (currently PHS, AMS and MYC's own brand of PurHC). The software downloads the race entrants from TES, allows the RC to enter times and codes (DNF, RAF, AVG etc.) before publishing the race and series results to a google site (eg https://sites.google...sults/2012-2013). Because it is a google spreadsheet, it can be accessed from any browser on the web (but it might challenge some mobiles), allowing results processing to commence on the start boat and be completed late at night from home if necessary.

I've put together a video demo of the software being used to illustrate how it works:

I'm happy to just maintain this software for our club, but if other clubs or TY are interested in the approach, then I'd be happy to share so long as I get some collaborators and am not expected to code for more than 1 club:)

Greg Wilkins <commodore@myc.org.au>