Year 2020 has been a different one. Usual problems called for unusual solution, RaceQs being one of them.
Being able to neither arrange races, nor meet before and after sail, nor have a rib on the water, we managed club races on our own. Communication happened through Facebook while rating and ranking on Google Sheets. Somebody came up with the idea to try out RaceQs as a tool to both review how a race played out and discuss tactical choices.
What is RaceQs?
RaceQs is a set of technology products designed to improve on the “human factor”
RaceQs’ writes on their website
A coaching tool, able to provide insight on our own performance as well as our competitiors’. It helps visualizing the immediate outcome of tactical decisions. A great input to our learning process, with cool 3d graphics and sharing capabilities.
RaceQs consists of a mobile app, a website and more recently a smart watch app (not tested on Veloce).
The mobile app is very straightforward. It records a GPS track and, if enabled, heeling, pitching and yawl. It uploads it to the website, either live or at the first chance to get online. The app can start automatically at a time and day before a regatta and stop after a defined amount of hours.
By registering on RaceQs website and creating an account, a sailor has access to her/his recordings. RaceQs crowdsources GPS traces from anyone recording with the app. If any other sailor has uploaded her/his trace in the same geographical area and time period, it is accessible to everybody else and available for analysis.
Pretty cool, right? Firstly, it means that I only have to worry about my own trace. Secondly, no need to “register” the participants to a regatta before the race. Finally, as long as any 2 boats install the app and upload a trace, I can race against anyone on any course.
Now, done with collecting data and having fun on the water, the digital fun begins.
Anyone with an account can define the race course via web in “regatta setup” mode making the virtual regatta available for everybody else. Although it takes a few moments to understand the steps, it is relatively intuitive.
The replay mode comes packed with really cool stuff.
Plenty of parameters to visualize and analyze, such as SOG, COG, heel, pitch, yawl, distance between boats, wind shadows, bow lee and more. Wind directions can be set at race start and, based on data from multiple yachts, variations from the baseline are automatically derived.
Several views are available. 3D and 2D to show the course, fleet,single boats or any 2 boats against each other.
Users can visualize or hide parameters to avoid cramped views and focus on the right stuff.
The play bare shows automatically identified tacks, jibes, roundings and other milestones. Time-to-start, elapsed-time are readily available. Together with the replay speed settings, a user can quickly find the instant she/he wants to analyze.
Our experience
A crowdsourced model and the simplicity in collecting data are definitely winning concepts.
We loved the automatic start and termination features. There’s a lot to prepare during the last 30 minutes before a race and remembering to start recording has a tendency slip down in my to-do list. Unfortunately, this functionality failed to work properly several times and a many races were never recorded. I suspect that the reason may be related with security or power savings options enabled on my mobile. Still trying to figure out…
A higher level of integrations with the onboard instrumentations could provide additional and more accurate data. However, I liked the choice of simplicity over absolute precision. Derived data from combined signals seems to be good and reliable enough for the purpose.
The analytics features look great and are real fun. They do provide valuable input to our after sail reviews. If I could wish, I would appreciate the possibility to define relations between 2 or more parameters and play them along the race 3d view. Say, heel/distance from next boat, or pitch/speed.
Sharing and collaborating is crucial to me and obviously an important aspect for RaceQs. What I really miss here is the ability to share from the mobile app.
We have not tried the watch app and perhaps will du next season. What plays on my mind though is why a smart watch app at all. All features in the watch app support handling during the race (start/dashboard/wind shifts/navigation), rather than coaching and analytics after race. Where is RaceQs going?