TackTracker

Beaumaris Motor Yacht Club successfully trialed TackTracker at the Commodore's Rally on August 9. Both manual and automated (with TackTracker) checks were made so they could be compared. Eight boats carried a QStarz BT-Q1000X tracker (one with two).

A comparison of the results yielded some interesting facts:

• The relatively few manual checks did not pick up many discrepancies where boats strayed far from the course, or outside a checkpoint (or gate).
• One boat carried a tracker at the bow and another at the wheelhouse. The timing difference added up to 6 seconds for the course. The conclusion is that if manual and automated checking is to be compared, the trackers need to be located at the bow of each boat.
• Some boats missed the start gate. This posed a problem for TackTracker in determining their start time. Some refinements have been made to the algorithm to address this issue.
• One boats missed a gate on the outbound leg and crossed it on the inbound leg. Initially this skewed their score, but with more refinements, TackTracker is now able to handle this scenario also.
• TackTracker's scoring algorithm was incorrectly using the travelled distance rather than the course distance in calculating expected times. This has now been fixed.

The updated TackTracker version with the above scoring fixes is 2.21 and is available for download. This version also incorporates some other Navigation Rally enhancements, such as reporting of distances and time travelled for the current leg and for the course.