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IOM Worlds : The Importance of the Volunteers….!!

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I need to ask Jim to write us a piece on this, but I do have a few reflections of my own. Firstly and most obviously, an event like this takes a lot of volunteers to run it – and the Volunteers Team at Datchet was fantastic. Our Jim, was Officer in charge and I suspect it was pretty challenging.

Datchet Radio Sailing is not a large Club. Our members could never cover off the jobs on their own. We simply needed help from lots of Clubs all over the Country plus help from the very kind members of the local Dinghy and Keelboat Club, DWSC.

Big surprise for me was how many volunteers you need each day simply to make a Worlds happen. It’s not like a weekend Open Meeting, but a tad larger!

I had in my mind that there would be about three dozen on the daily Volunteer team. If you add in the seven umpires, that’s very close to what I paid the kitchen to deliver each day in terms of lunches.

Does 36 volunteers to run an 84 person event sound a lot to you? I suppose it does to me, but the first obvious thing to think through is that you need more people to step forward than even that number. If your Club has an event which is a week long, you have to allow for those still working for a living on weekdays. Most probably you need 40-50 names to cover three dozen roles every day of the week.

During the event, Jim was on Heat Board duty. The Volunteer Group had to manage themselves – arrange the rosters and get work done. To my delight, as I’d arrive around 8am each day, I’d find the volunteer leaders sitting in the upstairs lounge outside the Scoring Room arranging the duty rosters of the day…. keeping stress away from Jim ! Keeping the security gates staffed from 8am!! Keeping the bins empty and the porta-loos cleaned.

It’s hard too – people kindly offer their days but don’t always turn up. Anyway the Volunteerr leadership Group got it all to happen.

Scoring Considerations:-

In 2025, I Parallel Scored a 50 boat UK Nationals on my own. It was at another location (Bartons Point), which did not have the Venue Challenges which Datchet presents. What I’m about to describe to you is a bit of a step up from one person for the Worlds.

I can write about the Scoring Team specifically which could not have operated without a whole lot of volunteer hours. It was a good proportion of the volunteering overall. Two of us were from Datchet Radio Sailing. The other team volunteers stepped forward from the local keelboat fleet at DWSC (where I spent 25 years racing). Plus we had a brilliant Scoring Coach on the phone from New Zealand all day.

The first thing you need capacity to cover with Radio Sailors of a certain age… at the World Championship level,… is what happens to your Championship if one of them cannot make it to the Club on a day. It doesn’t have to be just illness or stomach bugs either.

Datchet is situated on one of the World’s most congested highway systems. We cannot assume the scorers (all commuting) would actually get through. You can’t expect to tell competitors, “Racing cannot start as the scorers are stuck in traffic” !! As we ran our Championship planning meetings on weekdays, it soon became apparent this was a real challenge. That and regular car mechanical issues etc. (also happened during our IOM Nationals Dress Rehearsal)

On any day, because of the layout of the Datchet venue we knew we needed at least three people on the scoring team. In fact, it would be a sweat at three. One scorer in the Clubhouse, one on the line and one transferring documents between the two, keeping the library of documents neatly filed and the results on the Official Noticeboard posted.

We ran like that at the UK IOM Nationals (a “dress rehearsal”) – it was hard. We needed to cover all days of the week, preferably with four people on site on any day. We ended up with five names on our list – not all present every day due to work commitments etc, but we got through the one week workload.

When the team is assembled for your event, if they are not all seasoned radio sailors they will need training in heat based racing and scoring systems. We ran three training workshops in advance of the championships.

A note too about our “coach on the phone” – by Worlds day two, we figured a workflow that simply pulled him into the team with a full time functioning role of QA partner – to check the Quality of simply everything. He helped us to get the cleanest and most accurate set of results ever presented, (we reckon!). Two thousand results in the system, all double checked and perfect. Inputs and output results were all 100% audited in two directions. Plus in between bursts of QA’ing, he was trying to get ahead of the Board Managers – attempting to see if there were any promo/relegate nasties out there as the Umpire judgements came through. …. It was a pretty protesty event.

HMS – Scorers of the World Unite ….!!

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HMS, or rather HMS Excel, has served our sport really well. It is a great asset and it’s in all our interests to get the most fun and service from it that we can. For myself, I’ve used it at every event I’ve done scoring duty. From a design viewpoint, I adore it.

It does have some interesting foibles though. Little streaks of character that show through occasionally.

Why would MYA’s very stable and mature scoring system start throwing up errors which weren’t there when it was originally tested and launched? The answer, of course, is that between HMS and the laptop CPU processors are layer upon layer of Excel and Windows. They are changing and updating all the time.

There are some terrific User Guides – 2026 editions from GB especially. If you’ve not seen them, then print them out from MYA to keep. They are great pieces of writing, but don’t quite (for me) have enough on “common things that can go wrong”. I don’t know why we don’t have a little online User Noticeboard where we can post our hints and tips to share between Clubs. Otherwise what happens mostly for me is someone leans across my shoulder and says, “I don’t do it that way – have you tried this??….”

So – our “starter for five” tips ?? If you email us at the website with experiences and suggestions of your own, we can add them here. Here are my favourites:-

1/ Sorting

In number one position for me is sorting the score table.

Just sometimes ( 2 in a hundred?) you can glance at your score sheet and coincidentally notice the boats are not showing the correct sequence, but scores are correct.

I know that the spreadsheet says it will do a sort of the results when it prepares to “Display for Print”.

But it doesn’t about 2% of the time. Life carries on, but it’s pretty embarrassing when you print out a pile of results to hand around the bar and the finishers are not listed in the correct order.

All you need to do is get into the habit of clicking the blue sort button on column 1 (“Pos”) before you go to the print options. Do it as frequently as you like.

What’s the cause? I’ve no idea.

2/ White Screening

At a couple of Events, I have had the new Windows/11 laptop go into “white screen” with HMS Excel. Everything seems to lock up. Sometimes you can force Excel to quit, sometimes you can’t. Usually a full forced re-boot of the laptop is what you need.

We get the feeling it’s some little problem (shortage of storage for example?) that seems to accumulate within Excel as it remains open.

What to do?? Each time you finish scoring a heat:-

  • issue a save
  • close excel down using the big X
  • reopen a fresh excel ready to score the next heat.

I have scoring buddies who say it’s sufficient to close the spreadsheet (leaving Excel open) and then reopening the spreadsheet. …. Hmm not so sure. It takes the same amount of time to close Excel and reopen it afresh. I’d suggest do that.

What’s the cause? I’ve no idea.

3/ A single WDN/NSC/DSQ/RET Decision is to be Processed

– the HMS heat score table ending up out-of-points-sequence

Let’s face it, pretty frequently one is told about a single DSQ/NSC/WDN/RET decision AFTER you’ve entered the score sheet into HMS.

We all know to run WDN competitors as DNC until they drift down to bottom heat – and even then only when PRO and Board Manager agree – as it can drive a fleet reschedule decision to be evaluated.

Know now – this area can be hazardous…. At our Club, we have spent a longtime looking at these.

The great thing is ,if at your event, the score-entering is lagging slightly behind real life. If you’re right up to date with data entry, NSC/DSQ/RET/WDNs can arrive after you have entered the results from the score sheet.

a/ If you are running behind

the heat score sheet may show NSC/DSQ/RET/WDNetc in the middle of the list. DO NOT enter it like that into HMS like that.

To be safe, what you should do is enter NSC/DSQ/RET/DSQetc into HMS after the last finished boat of the heat.

What you are wanting to see is that the sequence in the points table is in tidy ascending order as you cast your eye down the column. We think you want to eliminate any chance that HMS Excel will attempt to do a “sort” on that column to tidy it up.

b/ Your data entry is smack up to date

Let’s suppose that you do indeed enter everything from the heat score sheet as presented and you maybe have a NSC or DSQ in the middle of the list.

Honestly – I know it’s fag, but stop right away. Rekey all the numbers from the impacted boat downwards, in that particular heat, to get the NSC/DSQs etc down at the bottom of the list. I know it’s tedious rekeying a ton of numbers, shuffling them up one row each. Believe me, just do it.

What’s the cause? We don’t know, but we suspect it’s avoiding HMS Excel doing it’s own sorting.

4/ At a large Event, Multiple NSC/DSQ/RET type decisions for a Single Heat arrive at once

This is tricky. It feels like (3) above, but maybe it has a problem type all of its own.

Our feeling is that you need to process these into HMS one at a time. Do not enter these adjustments as a group.

Our little local method which seems to keep the Doctor away, is to enter one adjustment then enter the Print sequence, but exit print again before going to paper. Then put the next adjustment in.

What’s the cause? Well … as a group of programmers we have our theories … but really we have no idea.

5/ Altering the Print Layout as the Event Progresses

It’s tempting as the scores pour in to think you can improve print legibility by adjusting margin sizes, flipping between portrait and landscape etc etc

Don’t. Just don’t…..

Leave it to the authors of the HMS spreadsheet and leave it alone.

Let us know your Hints and Tips by contact us via the “Contact” page of this website.

IOM Worlds : Scoring Outdoors? What Tablets to Use??

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Are you running an important Championship at your Club in the near future??

It’ll be quite well known in UK scoring circles that Datchet Radio Sailing use Parallel Scoring for the larger events. That is to say that, as we go, we score results simultaneously into two entirely separate systems in the interests of security and protecting competitor investment …and our hard earned Club reputation. You can lose both in the blink of an eye if something goes wrong.

There’s no point in parallel scoring if you don’t use entirely separate technologies. (We shall write more about Parallel Scoring later.) At the IOM Worlds we used HP and Dell Windows Laptops and a couple of ruggedised, military spec Android tablets. Always have at least two of everything!

We often use the laptops at the water’s edge, but for the IOM Worlds we kept them safely in a Clubhouse Office. For scoring at the line into the Parallel System, the Club has at least four android tablets.

We started with regular Samsung tablets, shrouded with Amazon bump proof and allegedly waterproof covers. Very nice, but not what we’ve ended up with.

For roughly the same money we have a couple of ruggedised tablets from a Hong Kong business called Oukitel. Definitely robust, no need for the protective covers and its IP68 water and dust resistant. Built for outdoors, when outside on a sunny day one appreciates the extra screen brightness. Mine has 620 nits… not that I know what that means! But it’s bright. The HP laptop by comparison is a devil to read outside on a sunny day.

We have two tablet sizes in use at Datchet – ten inch and eight inch screens. It’s a matter of personal preference. For Afleet HMS scoring specifically, my own preference would be the eight inch model.

OUKITEL RT3 Plus 4G Rugged Tablet 8-inch 11000mAh Big Battery 16MP Camera Android 15 (4GB+128GB NFC)

A couple more things:-

  • the RT3 Plus model (8 inch) in the photo above has a simply massive 11000mah hour battery aboard. It can do a couple of days scoring at least. Good.
  • I thought I’d be neutral about it, but these military spec tablets have TWO on board SIM slots. Not that we need two, but the point is the Samsungs have no SIM slots at all. You have to join a phone hotspot or return to the clubhouse to connect to the world. If you are into sending scores to a WhatsApp group, or direct to your Club Website on Afleet connect – or for heat backups…. you’ll want an onboard SIM and do those tasks at the line as the heat comes to an end. We use Lebara (Vodafone) SIMS.
  • Totally unexpectedly – if you look carefully at the photo you will see that the RT3 Plus has a neat flat, wide hand strap on the back. It’s personal preference, but for scoring I find that a simply massive benefit. I even use the ends of the hand strap to include a neck cord (and Apple AirTag) for the times in between races.

Drawbacks – probably this applies to tablet technology in general. Despite being IP68 waterproof, rainwater on the screen can effect the software mapping of where your finger hits the screen. If it’s raining and there’s no shelter, we now slip the tablets into one of those normal waterproof A4 pads that most clubs use for scoring.

https://www.amazon.com/Waterproof-Clipboard-Aihontai-Material-18-Month/dp/B07DQC8CDK?th=1

It’s only a couple of weeks since the IOM Worlds finished. We know at least two clubs that have, based on this experience, bought an Oukitel since the Worlds finished. No more Samsungs for us, I suspect.

Price? About the same price range as a Samsung ordinary tablet. Our 8 inch RT3 Plus was around 150GBPs in late 2025. Considerably less than a ruggedised Samsung, …. if you can find one these days. Cheap enough really to dedicate the tablet to scoring and allow nothing else in there.