Creating Races

You can view and play single tracks in TackTracker, but you need to create a race to unlock it's full power. A race comprises:

• A race definition, which includes name, date, location, start time, duration and course.
• A set of tracks belonging to the race

With a race, you can access placings, leg by leg analysis and see all boats on the screen at once. With a Club Regatta Licence, a single race can have multiple fleets or classes, with different start times and courses, and with their results reported independently.

The process of creating a race involves two steps:

1. Create the race definition
2. Add tracks to the race

If you are using logged tracking, tracks are added using the Track Loader. If you are live tracking, you must publish your race to the TackTracker cloud and schedule live trackers to add their tracks to the race.

Create new races in TackTracker using the Create Races wizard. Click the Create Races button at the top of the window to launch. If you have access to the Track Loader, you can also create races from there.

Race Date and Location

If you have a race or tracks currently loaded when invoking Create Races dialog, the race location and date will be derived automatically from the tracks. Otherwise, you will be prompted to supply the race date and an approximate location. The location may be specified by any of the following methods:

• Using the Location Finder to lookup a place name on the internet.
• Selecting a nearby Landmark that you have defined previously.
• Typing a Latitude and Longitude coordinate.

After clicking Next, you will be presented with the Create Races dialog:

Name and Start Time

It's worth spending some time to understand this dialog. Working from the top of the dialog:

Section	Explanation
Date	This is the date set on the previous page. If it is not correct, click Prev and correct it.
Time splitter control	This control is a graphic representation of the time span and when each race starts. It's an interactive control, and you can move the end flags and race start ballons with your mouse.
Name	The name of your race. If you are creating multiple races, the name will be appended automatically by a race number as indicated in the help text below
Number of Races	You can create multiple back-back races for a race session in once step. Specify the number of races you wish to create.
Commence interval	By default, tracks will start 5 minutes before the race start time. This is also the interval between successive races.
Start times	A start time will be listed for each race you are to create. Adjust these times by dragging the balloons in the time splitter, or type the time in the table.
Duration	The total duration for the race session, including all races created.

Click Next when you have the above details completed. The final dialog looks like this:

Publish or Save

This dialog lists the races you have created and gives you an opportunity to publish each to the TackTracker Cloud (for live tracking). Alternatively, if you wish to first refine each race with the Race Editor or are logged tracking, you will click Save and Close to save the races to your Race Library. (You need a valid licence for this button to appear.)

You can then go to the Race Library to load each race in turn and edit as required using the Race Editor.