MATTHEW SHEAHAN

Data beamed back from racing yachts in real time is providing analytics that promise to improve performance greatly, matt explains

Experience is something you get just after you needed it, the saying goes. Being wise after the event is something that we’re all pretty good at, and with today’s technology we are becoming overnight experts.

From smartphone apps for cyclists such as Strava to the many different apps for running and umpteen other sports, we can now get sophisticated data on the route we took, our average speed, distance climbed, calories burned and so on.

Even the most sedentary are now measuring their movements each day with Fitbits or other personal devices that record how many steps we’ve taken, enabling us to draw conclusions about how active we’ve been.

I freely admit to being a sucker for this. Chasing the average speed on a bike ride or trying to nudge up the calorie count on a run is an added motivation to try to push a little harder.

So, with data quantifying our daily lives, perhaps it’s hardly surprising that the same trend is gathering momentum in sailing.

In areas such as the America’s Cup, data collection and analysis has been commonplace for many years. The recent foiling cats took this data processing to another level, where a boat could be sending around 400 data channels back to base in real time.

But Cup campaigns have budgets that read like telephone numbers as well teams of data experts – not something that is available to the rest of us.

Nevertheless, data acquisition and analysis is coming downstream fast, as I discovered at the recent Sailing World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark.

Among the 1,200 competing boats, selected fleets were tracked on various days, providing data for the animations along with a number of behind-the-scenes functions. The system was provided by SAP Sailing Analytics, which has been partners with various events for some time, and their website allows open access to a number of key events that it has tracked.

The Worlds was its latest gig and allowed anyone who wanted to take a close look at the racing in detail. But what impressed me the most was the way in which the data was being used and the ease with which you could be your own coach.

The trackers themselves are small battery-powered devices that simply beam back GPS data, but it is the processing of that data that is so impressive.

There was the usual snail trail-type track of speeds, headings, times and distances, but the really useful stuff was several layers deeper.

The ability to look at specific manoeuvres, such as a tack, was particularly impressive.

Basic data such as speed into and out of the tack was made all the more relevant with data on turn rates and manoeuvre losses or gains which could highlight those who were good at tacking versus those who lost distance every time. Better still is the fact that this loss or gain can be shown graphically.

Similar analysis is available for other manoeuvres, making it possible to quantify a hunch that, say, a particular competitor was better upwind than down, and being able to show why.

When making these comparisons the system has a function that shows the race winning routes to each of the marks based on the top boat’s tracks and data.

Add to this the ability to sync video from one or several Gopro cameras that are linked to the boat’s track and it is easy to see what things look like from a range of different vantage points.

If you are really keen, collecting data from the winners across a range of weather conditions would allow you to build a profile of their performance that could be fed into a set of instruments to train against yourself.

At this level it’s easy to see how two-boat training might become less valuable in the future.

But what does this technology offer those who don’t tale part in racing?

Assuming that you can tap into the data of those who sail similar or identical boats and have uploaded their performance for others to see, passage planning, for example, could become far more accurate and relevant.

And if that becomes a reality, perhaps the information will finally have come just before you need it.

‘THE DATA COULD ALLOW YOU TO BE YOUR OWN COACH’