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New Regatta Hero Features for 2025

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At the end of the 2024 sailing season, we started implementing a series of new features for Regatta Hero to make them available in 2025. This post provides an overview; individual topics will be explained in more detail in separate blog posts over the coming weeks.

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Best Practice at WYC Friedrichshafen

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The regatta team of the Württemberg Yacht Club leaves nothing to chance when it comes to organizing the weekly Wednesday regatta. This includes professional announcements on the club's website, an information page with specific details on how to launch the app, and a well-attended information event with a parking lot regatta at the start of the series. The result is impressive.

[Read the full post...]

How Regatta Hero Works

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Regatta Hero is a complete system for organizing, conducting, tracking, and scoring regattas or regatta series. Sailors, race officers, and buoy layers have a smartphone app installed on their devices. Spectators can follow the regatta on a webpage in real-time or as a replay.

[Read the full post...]




Table of Contents

Here you can find all the posts that have been published in this blog so far.

  1. Table of Contents
  2. New Regatta Hero Features for 2025
  3. Best Practice at WYC Friedrichshafen
  4. How Regatta Hero Works
  5. About Me




New Regatta Hero Features for 2025

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At the end of the 2024 sailing season, we started implementing a series of new features for Regatta Hero to make them available in 2025. This post provides an overview; individual topics will be explained in more detail in separate blog posts over the coming weeks.

Here are the main innovations:

Additionally, various optimizations have been made to the map viewer:

In the replay mode of the map viewer, the following is new:

On the website, the following is new:

The list will certainly be expanded further by the start of the 2025 sailing season. Currently, we are working intensively on a completely revised documentation and online help system. Both will also be available bilingually.

Best Practice at WYC Friedrichshafen

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This is how you prepare a club regatta with Regatta Hero! The regatta team of the Württemberg Yacht Club leaves nothing to chance when it comes to organizing the weekly Wednesday regatta. This includes professional announcements on the club's website, an information page with specific details on how to launch the app, and a well-attended information event at the beginning of the regatta series that runs through the Regatta Hero procedure on land. The result is impressive.

The WYC website features a detailed information page that informs all participants about how the Wednesday regatta and Regatta Hero work. It includes a Q&A section and an excellently structured overview of all topics related to the Wednesday regatta. A visit to this page is worthwhile.

Two weeks before the first regatta, an information event is held at the club premises. Over 50 interested participants attend this event, where they receive assistance with installing, launching, and handling the app. Finally, a parking lot regatta is launched with all attendees! The organizing team had previously set up a circuit on the club grounds, which was then walked through.

Incidentally, a similar event took place in spring 2024 at the Hamburg Yacht Harbor.

And yesterday was the first race day in Friedrichshafen. The replay shows a perfectly executed club regatta as a time trial with a kangaroo start. Each regatta participant receives their individual start countdown from the app. After 105 minutes, the regatta ends for everyone, and the race officer immediately receives an email from Regatta Hero with the results list. Whoever completed the most laps and came closest to the next buoy wins.

And all of this can be watched live from the shore or later in the replay of the race. The following replay link jumps directly to the final phase of the race. With the slider at the top of the screen, you can fast forward or rewind.

Congratulations to the organizing team in Friedrichshafen... and, of course, to the winner of the race!

How Regatta Hero Works

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Regatta Hero is a complete system for organizing, conducting, tracking, and scoring regattas or regatta series. Sailors, race officers, and buoy layers have a smartphone app installed on their devices. Spectators can follow the regatta on a webpage in real-time or as a replay.

A smartphone is particularly suitable for Regatta Hero because it has all the necessary hardware components, such as a screen, speaker, GPS module, and mobile connection. Moreover, smartphones can be purchased for as little as €60. This means you don’t need to use your expensive smartphone; you can buy a second one just for regatta operations. If this smartphone gets damaged or lost, it’s annoying but manageable in terms of cost.

The smartphone app for sailors is easy to use: after installation, you enter your boat data (including yardstick) once and press a button to activate tracking.

The smartphone app for the race officer naturally comes with more extensive functionality. It allows for setting up regattas and courses and defining course marks for the routes. It also controls the start of the regatta, which runs fully automatically once initiated. When all boats have crossed the finish line, the regatta ends automatically, or the race officer can end it manually if some boats fail to reach the finish line.

The buoy layer can use the app to record the position of a buoy on the water, which is automatically transmitted to the system. Alternatively, they can place the smartphone (€60) in a waterproof box and attach it with tracking mode activated to the buoy. This way, Regatta Hero receives continuous updates on the buoy's swinging motion.

If smart, self-driving buoys are available, they can automatically send their position to Regatta Hero. Additionally, Regatta Hero features an MQTT interface, allowing third-party or self-made trackers to be integrated in real time.

For setting buoy positions, there is a map-based web interface based on OpenSeaMap. This interface allows the placement of buoy positions on the map with a mouse or a finger tap. This is very practical for roughly setting up buoy positions for the first time or adopting positions from navigation markers.

However, it’s important to understand that buoy positions are not automatically course marks. The race officer uses the app to define which course marks correspond to which buoy positions for a given course. More on this later.

Everything is coordinated via a cloud server provided by Regatta Hero or by sailing associations (e.g., the Sailing Association of Baden-Württemberg). Sailors or race officers don’t need to worry about server operation, configuration, or maintenance. Everything is automatically managed by the app. All you need are the login credentials (organization name and passcode) for the server.

About Me

My name is Kristian Raue, and I am the person behind Regatta Hero. I was born in 1961, grew up in the Ruhr area, and now live with my wife and four children in Kirchzarten near Freiburg.

I am a trained industrial engineer and have spent the last few decades in the software industry as a company founder and CEO (Intellicube AG, Jedox GmbH, and Cedalo GmbH).

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My sailing area is the Schluchsee in the Black Forest, the most beautiful and windy sailing area in Baden-Württemberg. During the day, there are often gusty winds from shifting directions. In the summer months, however, there is often a wonderful and steady thermal wind with strengths of 2-4 Bft in the evening.

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At the Schluchsee, I am the chairman of the Wassersportclub Schluchsee. I sail an F16 catamaran (Viper) and a Sailart 19.