News
December 21st, 2023
🎄 Making a list...
[published in January 2024, but I wrote this a few weeks ago, and I like the theme too much to change it.]
We've started a mailing list for SailScores users. Sign up using the form above to receive an occasional email notification of new SailScores features and updates as well as tips for using the site. Emails won't be very frequent: averaging less than one a month.
We'll continue to update this page as significant updates are made as well.
🎁 and checking it twice...
"What if we scored this series differently?" The biggest strength of SailScores is the instant sharing of results when a race is saved. No messing about with copying PDFs or changing file names. But previously, this came with a downside: experimenting with different scoring systems might change the public-facing results.
To address this we've added a new "What if?" feature. Accessible to scorekeepers for their club's series, it's tucked in the optional Additional Settings section. Instead of changing the series scoring system, use the Try Different Scoring button to walk through options to change the scoring system or discards. The results will be shown with an indicator to highlight any position changes from the currently active scoring system.
While this feature won't be used much, it should give clubs options and confidence that they are using a solid scoring system.
Note: to try a different system with club specific scoring codes, create the system in your club admin page and then use the "Try Different Scoring" button.
🎅 Gonna find out who's naughty and nice
A big behind the scenes update: we've updated the code to .Net 8. If all goes according to plan, the only noticeable change be a faster site. Please let us know if you see any other issues.
November 18th, 2023
Cox-Sprague Scoring
[edited to clarify comparison to High Point Percentage.] We've added Cox-Sprague scoring as a supported option. In this variant of High Point Percentage scoring, results are given more weight for top finishes. In addition, race weight is tweaked so that races with small participant counts get smaller relative weight than they would in straight High Point Percentage. The difference increases as the fleet gets smaller: a three boat race contributes triple that of a two boat race.
Core to SailScores: races can belong to multiple series, even series that are scored differently. With the addition of Cox-Sprague, a long-running champ series based on Cox-Sprague can be compiled easily at the same time as weekend series scored with Appendix A Low Point. The race results need to be entered only once.
High Point Percentage systems let competitors miss races without the penalty of receiving a low score. A competitor’s percentage includes only the races they participated in. Scoring can enforce minimum participation before a competitor is ranked. SailScores allows custom codes that count as participation but are not included in the total score. Use this approach for volunteer non-sailing days, e.g., "RC - Race Committee Duty".
Cox-Sprague discards can be surprising: with race weighting, discarding the lowest score or lowest percentage does not always improve a Cox-Sprague percentage total more than other potential discards. SailScores calculates the discard that will maximize a competitor's total. This is different from some other scoring calculators, which determine a less optimal discard.
November 11th, 2023
One feature added: after renaming a series, regatta, or competitor, urls based on the old name will continue to work. Previously, series and regattas had a "urlName" that kept the name of the first save: the url would not necessarily use the current series name.
This should help with sharing links to the site: urls will forward to the new name. If a replacement item is created with the same name, the forwarding will stop, and the links will go to the new item.
Next up is support for Cox-Sprague scoring: a variant of High Point Percentage.
November 5th, 2023
🦃
A bunch of fixes and tweaks released today:
- Encouraged by the request of a frostbiting club, a few fixes to High Point Percentage scoring, that bring SailScores in line with RaceSail’s calculations for High Point Percentage.
- High Point Series chart is right side up.
- High Point Series highlighting is correct
- Divisor (total competitors that qualify as "Came to starting area") is correctly calculated.
- A couple of new utilities for managing competitors:
- Ability to bulk inactivate competitors; want to start fresh each season? Just a few clicks now.
- Ability to clear all competitors' "Alternative Sail Numbers" at once. Alternative Sail Numbers can be used for a single regatta and then removed after the weekend.
- Regattas also got some love: default race numbers are no longer based on the date, but are based on how many previous races the selected fleet had in the regatta. And more guidance is provided for creating and naming regatta fleets.
- A favorite: the ordering of competitors in the score entry textbox has been improved. It's now easier to get the right competitor when typing a sail number. (Previously the alphabetical sort could get in the way.)
Division notation is still on the way, and next up are improvements to renaming series and regattas. (We plan to have previous names forward to the new regatta url.)
October 16th, 2023
👻
Today we released some new features:
- Regattas may have documents added, shown right below the notices section. Depending on use and cost, this feature may only be included with a subscription fee in the future.
- Clubs can select a localization setting which will alter date and some fixed text. This is an experimental feature. Languages other than English may have incomplete translations. Additional languages will be added in the future if interest warrants.
- Various bug fixes, particularly around regatta views.
This winter we expect to add a few more features for regattas, such as simpler regatta creation and division scoring within regatta fleets.
October 21st, 2021
🎃
This past season we've been testing a feature near the core of SailScores' goal: allowing results to be entered and shared as fast as possible. This has turned out to be one of the places where speech recognition can speed things up quite a bit.
So we did it. SailScores result entry now supports speech recognition, both on laptops as well as mobile devices. If you are interested in trying this out, contact us to enable this feature for your club.
The speech recognition is focused on sail numbers and skipper names, and requires an internet connection to work. If this becomes popular, we'll come up with a way to share the service costs for those that are using it.
January 1st, 2021
Happy New Year!
New Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) became effective today, January 1. There are a couple of minor changes to scoring in the new rules. SailScores has been updated to be in compliance with the new rules.
- New Score Code: NSC: Did not sail the course. This code may be used by the race committee that observed a boat not completing the course correctly. Previously, the Race Committee needed to either protest the boat or score them as DNF: did not finish. From a scoring perspective, this code is treated the same as "DNF." SailScores' scoring systems now have NSC as a scoring code.
- Series scoring rule A9 becomes rule 5.3 and has been slightly reworded. Previously rule A9 described how scoring could be changed for a "series longer than a regatta." This rule has been moved to A5.3, and now indicates that the Sailing Instructions must state that rule A5.3 will apply to be in effect. To accommodate this, SailScores default scoring system is now called "Appendix A For Series - Rule 5.3"
December 23rd, 2020
❄ ❄ ❄ Happy Holidays ❄ ❄ ❄
Snow is coming down outside, so no sailing means more time for updates to SailScores.
Many Admin page tweaks The design of the Club admin page has been updated to keep things easier to use and better fit on mobile devices. Other pages on the site may be getting similar updates as they are changed.
Browser Analytics Registered users may now select "Enable Browser Analytics" which will send more information about delays and script errors on our pages to SailScores. This is not advertising tracking: the information from this setting will only go to SailScores.
Dark mode is now supported. SailScores now uses your browser setting to determine whether a light background or dark background should be used. (Many browsers will use the operating system setting for this.)
Still more work to do. If you're interested in all the details, watch the code at Github.
October 13th, 2020
Summer's over
Here in Minnesota, the sailing season has come to an end for 2020. In the past few months we've made some small improvements to performance and stability.
And automatic weather information snuck in. Weather info is filled in when a race is created or moved from "scheduled" to "raced." Pre-filled weather info will be cleared out when the race date is changed.
In the next few months, SailScores series should gain the ability to have overlapping competitor divisions. With this, a regatta can include separate results any subset of the sailors, such as youth or single-handed, while still showing them in the overall regatta results.
Your thoughts and feature requests are welcome, either by email or at GitHub. For example, since the initial go-live clubs haven't expressed much interest in importing results from other systems, so time has been spent on better stats reporting and improving the result entry UI.
April 30th, 2020
Staying at home
Stay-at-home orders are causing us all to find a new rhythm. While staying safe, the competitor page finally got some attention, and is now available by clicking on a competitor name in series results. Let us know what you think and if there's a stat you think would be useful, please let us know.
March 14th, 2020
To the cloud...
Along with changing SailScores' hosting service, a few updates have been made to improve site performance. We're still finding some places that can be sped up and expect to continue making tweaks to help the site's responsiveness.
But for the next few months feature updates will slow down. We're working on a mobile app to support offline score entry integrated with this site.
January 23rd, 2020
New Feature
Weather!If the location of your club is set, SailScores will download and include the current weather conditions when you enter race results. The weather conditions will be displayed in the headers of series results, with a wind direction arrow, wind speed and selected icon.
November 26th, 2019
New Features
Faster creation of multiple competitors.The page to create competitors now can create multiple competitors at once, and can handle competitors pasted from a spreadsheet such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
Club request pageWe're working on speeding up the process of creating a new club. Requests still need to be approved by a person, but the form now gives a better idea of what information is needed to initially set up the club.
Admin tipsGuidance for newly setup clubs is now provided as on-page tips suggesting activities that should be completed for race scoring.
November 19th, 2019
New Features
ExportsSeries can now be exported to a stand-alone html page or comma separated file (.csv). Look for the buttons in the lower right below a series results.
Create and Merge CompetitorsCompetitors can now be created while entering a race's results. And if you later discover that a racer already existed in the club, the two competitors can be merged.
Admin tipsGuidance for newly setup clubs is now provided as on-page tips suggesting activities that should be completed for race scoring.
October 13th, 2019
New Features
Series ChartsSeries with more than one race can show a chart with the trend of competitors' rankings.
September 3rd, 2019
New Features
Regatta support: a regatta is featured on the front page for a week before and after the event, and is highlighted on the club home page for three weeks before and after the event.
A regatta will have fleets of competitors different from the usual club fleets, and will show competitors' home clubs.
August 16th, 2019
New Features
Series can include a column with changes in competitors' rankings.
Historical series can lock results, so that changes in the scoring system or the races will no longer change the series.
August 10th, 2019
New Features
Custom Scoring systems are now working.
- Three base systems are currently implemented: Appendix A (a.k.a. low point) for Series, Appendix A for Regattas, and High Point Percentage.
- Clubs can implement custom scoring systems that derive from the base systems, but customize codes or the discard pattern.
- A club should have a default scoring system set. (It can be one of the built in systems.)
- Series can then be set to use a different system.
June 7th, 2019 Update
New Features
Enhancements to the race editing page are getting rolled out today:
- The page automatically scrolls to show the last entered result. (This required that the Add Result field get moved toward the bottom of the page.)
- A few weeks ago we added a field to track scheduled, raced and abandoned races. Scheduled and abandoned races don't show up in series views on small devices and aren't used for scoring.
- The Name and Description fields have been moved to Additional Fields section that is collapse by default.
- The format of the result list has been improved, including more details score codes.
Other News
We've consolidated our issues list with the SailScores code at GitHub. Some of the issues have a "Help wanted" tag, where we'd love to hear more input from potential users.
February 25th, 2019
SailScores.com is kinda live. There are still features to be added, but the basics are working. In the next few months there will be plenty of testing and tweaks. Hopefully a few new features as well. If you are interested in helping out with the testing, please reach out and let us know.