During Miami OCR, squad members who were not competing spent time each evening, digitizing sail photos from the day’s racing to analyze and compare setups of the top teams with what we are currently doing.
This fall we analyzed GPS data using a set of boat handling algorithms that I developed, which allowed us to zero in on our target performance numbers and optimize technique accordingly. Having a metric to shoot for, and daily feedback on how close teams were to achieving the targets, was super motivating, and kept the focus on the details of the process.
Daily Tacking Feedback
Right now, there are so many companies building awesome sailing technology, that an in-house tech program doesn’t really make sense. For $25,000 the program that we could put together would provide truly world class metrics and tools for our coaches and athletes, and provide access to information currently unavailable to any American teams.
By documenting and archiving this data, we’ll be building a legacy for future generations to use as benchmarks - objective snapshots of what we’ve tried, what we’ve learned, what works and what doesn’t.
In 2019, we hope to add two main tech pieces to our arsenal: the TruSail telemetry system, and the WindBot weather station. By purchasing two TruSail systems, we’ll be able to use them for two boat testing, which should help us really understand whether the changes we’re making are moving the needle, and what factors should be examined further.
The WindBot weather stations will bring us up to speed with other countries who have weather systems that can share wind data across courses, and can help track wind patterns from the coach boat throughout the day.
The budget for these items can be seen in the Technology budget below.
