For Race Committees — Race Marks

What’s in it for the club

Four things race officers tell us cost them the most time and goodwill.

Fewer “what’s the course?” calls

The course you published is the course on every phone in the fleet, with the marks in order and the roundings spelled out. Less VHF, fewer boats sailing the wrong way round C.

Catch the clash before the fleet does

Overlay several fleets' courses on one map and get warned where a single mark has opposite roundings for different fleets, or where two fleets' courses cross.

Nothing half-finished reaches the water

Work on the season's courses and marks in a private draft. Publish when you're ready, as a versioned bundle — the app only ever sees what you published.

Change it on the day

Start delays, a shortened course, a mark that moved: race-day changes go live instantly as overrides on top of the published bundle, and every change is logged with who and when.

What the committee tool does

A browser-based portal for the club — desktop for season prep, tablet on the committee boat.

Course card entry: Shortform text entry for course sequences, in the same grammar the app uses. Paste a season's worth in one go: direction code, course number, mark sequence, roundings, distance, and which fleets sail which course.
Interactive course viewer: See the course drawn on the map before the fleet does. Overlay multiple fleets at once — on a “D” wind day, view Cruiser 0, Cruiser 3, the hut starts and a windward/leeward fleet together — and filter by wind direction, fleet or start location.
Conflict detection: Warns when one mark carries conflicting rounding directions across fleets, and highlights where fleet courses cross.
Mark & line registry: Physical marks with known positions, virtual marks with no buoy, and live marks whose position is set on the day from a vessel's GPS — committee vessels included.
Draft → publish: Catalogue changes are drafted privately and published as versioned bundles, at the same time as the PDF course cards are generated. No half-finished data reaches live app users.
Race-day overrides: Start times, course shortening and mark positions can be changed live, as an override layer on top of the published bundle rather than an edit to it — so the published season stays intact.
Live race view: Share a link and anyone can follow a boat's race in real time — status, current mark, leg times, finish time and whether the finish was auto-detected or called. No login: the link is the access.
Roles & audit: Club admins manage the season; race officers get the race-day features without the season management. Every write is logged — timestamp, author, action, before and after.

Screenshots are coming. Every screenshot we hold today is app-side, so this page describes the portal rather than showing it. A capture pass on the real thing — course overlay, conflict warning, publish dialog, live race view — is queued (ra-1g2e). If you'd rather see it than read about it, we'll walk you through the live portal on a call.

What we ask, and what we won’t do

Clubs are rightly protective of their race documents. Where we stand:

Your documents stay yours

Race Marks links through to what your club publishes and transcribes course cards into a digital, filterable form. Nothing is re-hosted without the club's agreement.

Alongside, not instead of

The app is used alongside your official communications. Your notices and announcements remain the definitive source on race night.

You keep control of publishing

Nothing reaches the fleet until the club publishes it. The draft/publish split exists precisely so the club decides when.

Currently free

What it costs today

The baseline committee tools — course and mark authoring, publishing, race-day overrides and the live race view — are currently free for race officers and clubs, and we are not charging clubs during the trial programme.

Being straight about where that goes. “Currently free” is the honest word. Some of what we're building carries a real running cost, so parts of the tool may become paid. For a club racing with us season after season we'd expect a written agreement rather than an open-ended free offer — and one shape we're weighing keeps the baseline free for clubs that feed the fleet back: committee-vessel positions connected, and live course and start-time updates published on the day. None of that is settled, and none of it changes the terms of a trial series we've already agreed with you. When it does firm up, you'll hear it from us before you read it here.

Try it for a series

We onboard trial clubs hands-on: we take your course cards, marks and race programme, set them up with you, and stay on the end of the phone for your first race days. Baseline committee tools are currently free — what we get out of it is a fleet that can read your racing.

Email us about a trial Register the club’s interest

Sailing in the fleet as well? See what your members get.