A Measurement System for Performance Monitoring on Small Sailing Dinghies

Abstract

This paper describes a new performance monitoring system for dinghies and small sailing boats, developed in a collaborative project of the Yacht Research Unit Kiel (YRUK) and the Mads Clausen Institute (MCI) of the University of Southern Denmark. The system under development features a complete set of nautical instruments (wind, boat speed and heading, position) as well as dynamic sensors measuring the motion of the dinghy with additional audio and video streams for crew observations. Most sensors are integrated in a small lightweight housing also containing a main processing unit to be mounted on a dinghy. Some external miniaturized sensors (wind and water anemometers) are connected wirelessly. Data and media streams are recorded. Further a telemetry system allows online data transmission to a remote client operated on a coach boat. Analysis software allows the coach to visualize and analyze the performance of the dinghy. Both, the hardware system and the analysis software are presented here including first results from a field trial.