Lockdown Virtual Team Sailing Regatta

Thanks to some excellent team work by Matthew Smith at Whangarei, 5 teams entered a virtual team regatta involving informal teams from Whangarei Boys [2], Whangarei Girls, Mahurangi and Kerikeri High School.

The format involved a draw of 20 races set at specific times by Matthew. The draw obviously listed who sailed against whom, the time of the race and also gave the teams sail colours to select from the Google programme.  Each pair of teams dialled into Google at the appropriate time using an appropriate code [race 1, race 2, etc]. The draw required the team sailors to select appropriate boat and sail colours from the Google programme. Ian Gardiner was a jump ahead of us in organising a similar regatta for the NBYTRA teams with help from team managers and others. His IT experience and advice was a great help to the Northland Region.

The races started promptly on time apart from minor glitches arising from the slightly clunky programme, some elderly PCs and elderly less efficient IT personnel.

Matthew and I acted as observers and scorers which allowed a fascinating aerial picture of the races which involved 3 main skills – a knowledge of starting and sailing correct angles, a knowledge of team sailing and skill in managing the few PC buttons involved. The latter improved vastly with practise. Umpiring was built into the Google programme!

A very important element was a communication system which Matthew organised very well. It involved a few extra ‘phones but mainly audio on the P Cs and possibly zoom.

The most important result was that most of the sailors seemed to be having fun judging by the background noise!

Derry