Pocket Profiles: Improve Sailing Skills

Computers can help make you more effective in any activity, and sailing is no exception. Most sailboats that cover substantial distances, known as "cruising" sailboats, carry personal computers. Cruisers--people who sail cruising sailboats--use personal computers to look up tide tables, access navigational information, and compose that next big adventure story.

In our sailboat business, the Pocket PC has replaced the laptop computer for most shipboard tasks because of its portability and size. Most electronic sensors aboard a boat produce signals that can be understood by computers. A Pocket PC is a great way to display the output of those sensors, including wind speed and direction, water-depth, and of course, present or past position as ascertained by Global Positioning System (GPS).

Another recent change is the replacement of marine radios with cell phones for most coastal and inland sailing communication. We currently use cell phones while sailing to call marinas and to communicate with other boats. The wireless Pocket PC is going to be the next big improvement in shipboard safety and convenience.

Teaching sailing skills with desktop and Pocket PCs

Although most people can pick up the basics quickly, learning to sail well can take quite a while. The best way to get from beginner to expert as soon as possible is to understand all those little sailing details. You do that by sailing, but you can speed up the process with the help of a desktop PC and a Pocket PC.

We use two software programs to teach the finer points of sailing: the Match Racing Program and the Single Sailboat Racing Program. The first program uses two Pocket PCs equipped with GPS receivers to electronically record the positions of two real sailboats involved in a race. The second program uses the same hardware and measures the upwind performance of a single sailboat over a measured mile. Both programs use Voyager USA software (www.ipass.net/sailboat/analyser.htm) to display the race graphically on a map (Screen 1).

Screen 1: The Voyager USA program displays the data we captured from the sailboat race graphically on a map.

With the Match Racing Program, each sailboat carries a Pocket PC equipped with a Global Positioning System receiver. Every 2 seconds the GPS receivers transmit simple position data in comma-delimited text format to the Pocket PCs. The Pocket PCs save this position data in text files.

When the race is over, I collect the equipment and download the information from both Pocket PCs into an Excel worksheet, which I save and use as the input document for Voyager USA's map display. It's easy to add new positions (docks, homes, buoys, race start and finish points) to the basic document for display in Voyager USA. Moving the cursor over the map will give you the correct coordinates for that position.

When we play back our race on our home computer, we see two boats racing in real time on a computer map of the actual sailing area. One boat leaves a blue trace and the other a red trace, layered over our map graphic. Start and finish marks are white dots, and distance and direction are measured between cursor points and displayed as a black line.