Cowes Week App: A traditional event meets state-of-the-art regatta technology

​The Cowes Week app is a prime example of the transformation of one of the world’s most traditional regattas. What used to be communicated via noticeboards, posters and flag signals has, for some time now, largely been handled digitally. The app delivers official announcements, daily schedules, course information, results and standings directly to the crews. Spectators can also use it to access news, weather updates and details of the onshore programme.

​Schedules, start times and updates sent straight to your mobile

According to Cowes Week, the app has now become a key means of communication for participants. If start times are brought forward, courses are changed or a postponement is announced, this information is intended to appear there at short notice. This is fitting for a regatta which, year after year, involves hundreds of boats across a wide variety of classes on a challenging course.

Laurence Mead, former race director of Cowes Week, explains the importance of the app very clearly in an interview with *YACHT*: “The other thing that makes Cowes Week possible in its modern form is the Cowes Week app. Whether it’s the race organisers or the sailors – everyone uses it. It tracks the boats’ progress. It shows users the course, the distance to the next mark and all the start times.” Mead describes it as “very advanced and important for running a flexible regatta”.

​More on 200 years of Cowes Week:

• How the classic regatta achieved worldwide fame
• Between tradition and technology – an interview with the regatta director

​Tracking helps race organisers

​The tracking function is particularly important. According to the organisers, the app starts tracking participants’ locations at around 10 am each day and only stops once all the boats have left the race course. To save battery power, tracking does not take place continuously, but at intervals of approximately five minutes.

According to Cowes Week, the data is transmitted to Race Management so that the race organisers can better monitor the progress of each class and, if necessary, decide on measures such as shortening the course. The organisers state that this data is not publicly visible.

The app makes organising things easier than before

Mead says the app is “designed to make the whole regatta process easier for participants”. In his view, this is a key reason why a flexible large-scale regatta in the Solent can be organised more efficiently today than in the past.

​The difference becomes particularly clear when compared with previous procedures. Mead says:

"We used to have course boards and a flag system to signal the courses. It was madness! That’s all in the past now, and the regatta has improved so much as a result."

Organised by user

The app is also structured differently depending on the user’s role. When launching the app, participants select whether they are competitors on the water or spectators on shore, and are shown different regatta-related content. For crews, the app is accessed via a boat-specific identifier. This is used to assign teams to a boat and, according to the organisers, enables them to receive information relevant to their class.

The app is available on the Apple App Store and on Google Play.

More information on this you can find here on the organiser’s website.