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Cayenne's picture

These are my main sailing sites. I am the webmaster.

Pacific Cup: http://www.pacificcup.org
Corinthian Yacht Club http://www.cyc.org
Passport Owners Association http://passportyachts.org

Comments

Regatta Management

Cayenne's picture

Two key elements of race management are collecting entries and posting results.

I have used CCK content types for Entries, though webforms would work well too.

I am now investigating how to best post results. Suggestions and discussion, with a view toward development, are invited.

I'm the webmaster for the

gopher_indy's picture

I'm the webmaster for the Indianapolis Sailing Club. The site is pretty much just static HTML at this point although I do use some SSI. Overall, pretty unsophisticated compared to what Drupal can do. I'm just learning Drupal at this point and so far am very impressed with it's flexibility. I'm no expert at this point, so be kind when I show my naivete. I suspect I'll be learning more here than contributing, but I'm willing to contribute in whatever way possible.

I'm just beginning work on a new Drupal-based website for the club. One big issue for me (and I think others in the club) is keeping our web presence confined to just indianapolissailing.org. A couple of fleets have created their own websites which don't look very professional (e.g., obviously made with MS Frontpage) and often duplicate content on the indianapolissailing.org website. One of my main goals is to try to pull these rogue websites back "into the fold" at indianapolissailing.org. The ability of Drupal to allow many people to edit the website content without screwing up the "presentation" is vital. I'm also planning on using OG and the Blog module to naturally group club members into fleets so members can follow news for just their fleet if they want and, with the Blog module, to allow individual members to post their own content (within reason). Hopefully, this gives enough flexibility that I can get everyone back on indianapolissailing.org.

sailhost.org

fijiaaron's picture

Howdy,

Nice to find some fellow sailors & Drupal users. I'm currently shoreside in Seattle, trying to start a consulting business I can take offshore with me. I'm working on a website (sailhost.org) for hosting free websites for sailors, focussing on cruisers with blogs, and related business. Since I hope a community will develop, Drupal seems like a good platfrom for the site.

I'm particularly interested to hearing about any navigational or charting applications. I might be interested in working on a Google maps route following plugin for Drupal.

I'm interested in improving sailmail and low bandwidth blogging techniques. I also do wireless network setups, and hope to put in wifi for visitors at places like the Royal Suva Yacht Club in Fiij (if they don't have it alread.) Something else that I'd like to spend more time playing with is Seaclear, a free raster chart navigation application.

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

Welcome

Cayenne's picture

I am very very familiar with sailmail. Drupal is a great community platform.

I have used Seaclear across the pacific and atlantic, too!

vincent youmans

IrishGringo's picture

Hey aaron...
I am an cronic sailer.. but I prefer dingy's.. lazers... anything single or double handed, and that I can car top. I have done big boats, but I dont like skippers yelling at me as I am trying to drink my beer during a race... haha....

anyway, I live in Anapolis Md, and Miami Fl. Both big sailing towns. I have a lot of Pro sailor friends as well. I even have a boat listing site in the drawing board.

I also do iPhone development.
I would be interested in talking to you more about pitching some boating ideas.

you can read more about me at: http://vyoumans.com
adios

www.bbsc.org.au

kirabella2000's picture

Hello,

I am a member of Batemans Bay Sailing Club and I built and run the club's website www.bbsc.org.au using Drupal.

regards,

Simon
Simon Byrne
Canberra, Australia

That's a nice-looking site

Cayenne's picture

That's a nice-looking site

holmeshole.org

ericxb's picture

I'm the webmaster for our racing group: Holmes Hole Sailing Association. Our site is non-Drupal at the moment. We are home to the world famous George W. Moffett annual race. It's a an enormously fun handicapped race every September in Vineyard Sound. You all are welcome although the locals have an advantage because there is about a 4 knot current current and we know where the eddies are.

I would like to do more work plotting courses. The vision is an interface where a race official would input the course marks as a name, GPS coordinate, and keep to port/starboard. After which the course would be rendered for participants to download. Any of this already exist?

I got started a few years ago doing it in perl. I got hung up doing the math for calculating the bearing between two points. My version of the formula gives answers off in left field. The idea is to present a table of data with the compass bearing for the subsequent mark so you have some clue about your next point of sail before you tack. It's time to dive back in unless this has already been done? [please oh please]

I also thought it would be fun to plot it on a chart. Easy enough to do this with the Google Maps interface; but Google doesn't have anything resembling a nautical chart. We usually use the Coast Guard navigational buoys as our course marks; so everyone has them on their charts. Any ideas about getting charts?

Eric W. Bates
A geek on an island

Eric W. Bates
A geek on an island

nautical charts

norm1710's picture

Hi Ericxb

While not nautical charts, there is an OS project called http://openstreetmap.org/ (and wiki page).

This has full map data and APIs for adding your own routes, labels and data.

A project based on OpenStreetMap that is akin to what you are trying to do is a pedestrian routing map

Just a thought in case someone hasn't done the hard work for you!

Rgds I

Eric- I'd be interested in

fijiaaron's picture

Eric-

I'd be interested in working on this too. My idea is for a similar thing, but with longer distance (cruising) routes.

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

Google?

Cayenne's picture

It seems that most sites are all over Google Earth, which is verry nice, but does put your fate in the hands of someone else. What happens when you go offshore with Open Street Maps?

edit> Okay, I looked. Blue. No depths or pretty sat pictures, just blue. Which actually ain't too bad. Blue is good.

My thinking is that the ideal way to go would be to standardize based on some existing and non-proprietary standard (I used to manage standards for a living), and extend it to cover the things we need to track watery voyages and races.

Then, we (a) share the standard with the world to great praise and (b) create or invite the creation of the interface to other display standards, such as Google Maps. That way, we are never beholden to anybody.

Has anybody looked at these to figure out which might be the easiest to steal, er, extend?

Wow., just scratching the surface

Cayenne's picture

openstreetmap.org is a remarkably friendly setup. Easy to copy and use any part of the world under a creative commons license.

Of course, the wondering aloud I did yesterday is rubbish. http://openstreetmap.org is based on an XML format, and there are translators to any of a number of other formats. It looks to me like the xml tracking format preferred by openstreetmap.org is sort of a pain to manage. Something more database-friendly would be nicer.

For my needs, I need:

Lat, Lon, Date/Time, BoatID.

I think I, and others, would benefit from a couple of race-related fields, including RaceID, and "Event" (Start, finish, etc)

What do you-all want?

races

fijiaaron's picture

For most club-style races, you're probably not going to be that interested in a map anyway, just the coodinates to draw your course and plot boat positions. A local map overlay would be nice too, and I'd think something like openstreetmaps would be good enough. I'd think using something like seaclear could be used for lining up a map to your GPS coords, though again, I wouldn't want to navigate by it.

I'd look at GEOcaching apps. Surely there's a free one around you could adapt to a race.

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

I would second Aaron's

gopher_indy's picture

I would second Aaron's opinion that having a map of the course is not vital. At our club, the exact course is usually not known but is instead loosely defined by "racing quadrants" (a course would be, for example, 1-2-3 where the numerals refer to a racing mark somewhere in the vicinity of that numbered quadrant). For my purposes, what is useful is the ability to store race results in the mySQL database, have the results link to Drupal users as well as some kind of "boat" database. I would envision something like the following:

1) table of "race series" that contained details of the series itself (e.g., date/time, location, short description)
2) table of "race results" that linked to the "race series" and contained the results for each race per participant ("participant" would be the combination of Drupal user, "skipper", and a boat)
3) auto-calculation of results
4) ability to display the above in a nicely formatted way (think this would be the easiest part)

If we do this right, it should be general enough for other competitions besides sailing regattas. Lots of competitions could make use of a combination of "participant" ("skipper", "driver", "jockey", etc.) and the "equipment" ("boat", "car", "horse", etc.). In some cases, there might be utility for some sort of map of the course used for the competition.

As a corollary to this, having the ability to either upload results to the website or directly enter the results would be fantastic. One caveat is that for our club's purposes we would need to be able to enter results in an "off-line" mode as there is no internet access from the race committee boat. Although thinking about this, one could probably use an internet-enabled cell phone for this (iPhone!).

I think the primary utility (for me and I suspect most other sailing clubs) would be to be able to store the results. Icing on the cake would be the ability to map the course...

-Bruce

Thinking about this a little

gopher_indy's picture

Thinking about this a little more, I wonder if something along the lines of a per boat (or participant in the generic sense) "track" would be useful. By "track" I mean GPS derived positions at fixed time intervals over the course of the race. If we had something like that we could then recreate the race later (i.e., overlay all the available "tracks" on a map of the course)! It would be great for analyzing tactics after the fact although not having wind information would make it's utility a little limited.

I think openstreetmaps already has the capability to upload "tracks". I've never done so don't have any first hand experience...

Of course, doing this would require a GPS on the boat which would be illegal for most small one-design classes. Could probably be done for larger boats where electronic navigation aids are allowed.

-Bruce

race mapping & tracking

norm1710's picture

If you want to 'replay' the race, then check out www.mapmytracks.com or more specifically www.mapmytracks.com/sports/sailing.

This site takes data from a GPS enabled mobile phone and maps it on a website for later analysis. Can be used as an individual or group basis.

Obviously, it won't help if class rules forbid the use of GPSs...

This doesn't cover all the bases above (like storing race results) but it may well be interesting for quite a few.

Rgds
Ian

tracks

fijiaaron's picture

This is just what I had in mind. A track would be a series of waypoints & times associated with a boat and a race.

I didn't know having a GPS on board was against the rules, though. Even then, with a mapping program you could draw on tracks by punching in known waypoints (the course markers) and times for each boat, as well as estimated positions and times for events such as fouls based on notes.

What if a GPS was sealed away so it couldn't be used except for historical data after the race? Not that I think I could have any influence on changing racing rules.

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

I know that the one-design

gopher_indy's picture

I know that the one-design boats that I sail (Laser and Highlander) specifically prohibit electronic navigation aids. This is probably somewhat peculiar to small one-design classes. I suspect larger one-design classes might allow electronic navigation aids as the boats are large enough to go out on open water. Whether a GPS is allowed or not on board during racing is specific to a particular one-design class (i.e., each one-design class sets its own rules).

For the Laser and Highlander, I don't think it would matter at all if the device was sealed. GPS units aren't allowed, period.

The need for maps

ericxb's picture

You folks are right. A good skipper is going to ignore an on-line chart and plot the course on their own charts. However, there is something very sexy about a good chart and pretty maps are just the sort of thing to help Luddites decide that this web thing is pretty interesting after all.

Eric W. Bates
A geek on an island

Eric W. Bates
A geek on an island

Couple of thoughts

Cayenne's picture

First, even if position-finding is forbidden in some one design classes, that should not prohibit a device that reports the position to a central server without talking to the boat!

Second, and I'm sure ericxb will agree, a good skipper uses all the tools available to him (or her). Some on-line charts are great, and some are lousy, but ignoring them can get you into trouble. (Salty story about approaching Hawaii from San Francisco available on request)

Thought just occurred to me: If I take an iphone 3g on my laser in a race am I DSQ'd for having a gps? Or am I just stupid for taking a phone on a dinghy?

I believe the Laser rules

gopher_indy's picture

I believe the Laser rules would expressly forbid "electronic aids" and you could probably be DSQ'd for having an iPhone 3G on board. Most one-design small boat classes are like this. The idea is to keep costs under control and the sailing more "seat of the pants" than technology driven. My suspicion is that any electronic device using GPS would be forbidden in most one-design small boat classes (even something like a "sealed box" unless it was class approved).

This doesn't negate the potential value of having something like this as a feature of a Drupal-based website. There are plenty of larger boats that routinely carry navigation aids (including GPS) that could potentially benefit from having the ability to "replay" a race after the fact.

My point in bringing this up was not to throw cold water on the idea but rather to point out the applicability was probably not universal...

A long since dead MIT

mradcliffe's picture

A long since dead MIT project was RiverRat to put GPS trackers on race boats so that spectators could watch in real-time. Is that considered an electronic aid or simply spectating?

It likely depends on the

gopher_indy's picture

It likely depends on the particular class of boat. Some classes are more lenient on what can be modified on the boat (e.g., changes to the shape of the centerboard or rudder) while others are very strict. The Laser class is an example of a class that is very strict on what equipment is allowed while the Moth is an example of a "development" class where next to anything is allowed within certain overall parameters. It's simply not possible to make a blanket statement on what a particular class would or would not allow.

Most, but certainly not all, small one-design boats tend to err on the side of not allowing electronics of any sort on the boat to minimize entry costs (sailboats tend to be expensive to begin with) and to maximize the "seat of the pants" racing. Whether something like "RiverRat" would be allowed would have to be determined by each classes rules committee (or equivalent). My suspicion is that not a lot of classes would allow it as it seems to be of dubious value given the additional expense.

As an aside, I think that anyone trying to make sailboat racing a "spectator" sport must have a few screws loose. The sport is complex and occurs over a large course area (sometimes out of sight of the naked eye). Making it "spectator" friendly fundamentally changes the game (and for the worse, I believe). Just seeing a GPS trace of all of the boats in a race doesn't seem to me to make sailboat racing into a "spectator" sport. As a sailor, the only racing I actually enjoy watching is the America's Cup and then only in small doses. Sailboat racing is much better appreciated as a competitor than as a spectator!

It all depends

Cayenne's picture

Pacific Cup, for example, has 70 boats competing, about 400 on the water participants, and 20,000 -100,000 people checking the website for positions, updates, etc. But it needs narration, processing, and explanation.

Sort of like in a movie where the announcer is making a running commentary about a sporting event: "uh oh, Johnsen has fallen behind! He'll need to make big gains if he wants to stay in the series." That doesn't happen in real life, not in live spectating, but it's about the only way most people can enjoy the sport beyond "oh look at the pretty sails."

I used to be a fencer; that's another impossible to watch sport.

Schooner Laura Ellen

Bluenose37's picture

http://bluenosejr.com
This is the website for the schooner I'm restoring for my personal use. Laura Ellen is a Roue (designer of the Bluenose) designed Bluenose Jr.

Since this is my first attempt at Drupal development, your comments on the site would be greatly appreciated.

Allan Aylard
http://bluenosejr.com

Nockamixon Sail Club

glennw_d's picture

http://nockamixonsailclub.org is my first Drupal site.

It features 3 levels of content privilege: General Public, Club Members and Fleet Council. I use tac-lite to implement this. The site has the following types of content providers: Club Members who basically can comment and have their own blog; Fleet Council who can also add club events and articles; and Race Administrators who can add racing events, racing results and series results.

The club has around 200 members and is very active during the spring, summer and fall. We are located in Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia.

The site launched in mid-November of this year.

I appreciate any and all comments.

Glenn

Glenn, Nice looking Drupal

gopher_indy's picture

Glenn,

Nice looking Drupal site. What theme are you using?

-Bruce

Re: Glenn, Nice looking Drupal

glennw_d's picture

We're using the Marinelli theme.

Glenn

Looks great

fijiaaron's picture

nice user-friendly design and lots of easily discoverable content and features. I'd love to model a package for other sailing clubs on a site like this.

Aaron Evans
one-shore.com

I am a huge fan of Marinelli

Cayenne's picture

we use it at www.cyc.org, only I modified the page.tpl to move the drop-down menu to below the banner.

Say, what if we created an installation profile for yacht clubs and sailing clubs? Think that'd be worthwhile?

Hey Sailors And here is

hebhansen's picture

Hey Sailors

And here is another. Not running sailor sites at this time but running other Drupal

I am looking for real time GPS plotting module for a Drupal site. Sailing yes - Land yes

http://www.endomondo.com/login is an app for iphone that records your GPS movements and plots them in the App realtime.

I am nor sure how this is setup but might be inspiration for further investigation....

HB

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