From 2024, Datchet Radio Sailing started experimenting with WhatsApp Groups as part of Open Meeting, Regatta and Championship Management.
Lots of Clubs will be doing the same, and if WhatsApp goes belly up, you can always switch to Signal or Telegraph. Use of WhatsApp Groups for Competitors, Race Teams, Umpire Groups will already be a regular feature at lots of Clubs Worldwide.
In 2025, at the DF95 Nationals, we also experimented with broadcasting AFLEET live results straight into a Competitor WhatsApp Group. … Amazingly popular that was! … If you are an AFLEET user simply select SHARE on the SCORE screen, pick WhatsApp and off you go. Simple.
Late in 2025, WhatsApp started offering post-beta versions of WhatsApp to support iPads. It transformed the way we scored the IOM Worlds.
The Championship courses at Datchet were three in number. The south and north courses at their furthest extremities (eg finish lines) were probably near 400 metres apart. The Clubhouse stands at the mid point. We had a third course, right in front of the Clubhouse. My normal preference hitherto was to score at the finish line and do all the work in our fabulous Race Control Van. However, at Championship result volumes – plus Umpire Paperwork, SYRPH, Standard Redress and all that – well, working in the confined space of the Race Control Van was never going to be practical. We decided instead to locate work at the Scoring Office in the Clubhouse Boardroom. What a good decision that was.
However, the time to hand carry heat score sheets back, sometimes 250 metres, (and up two flights of stairs, three times an hour!) to the Scoring Office was a challenge.
Our PRO had told us that trials of sending photos of score sheets by email had to be abandoned – email sometimes hits inexplicable delays.
The breakthrough was WhatsApp for iPads – and the use of (my family’s) ancient iPad Pro. That’s basically an A4 sized iPad. ….Amazing transformation in workflow for us.
For safety, security and backup, we would always immediately photograph the heat score sheet as it is handed over by the Board Manager. At the IOM Worlds, when we were handed the sheet the Line Scorer would photograph it straight into the WhatsApp Group and press ‘send’. Honestly, it was instantly popping up full size on the A4 iPad in the Scorers Office – and review, audit checking and data entry could start.
Generally, we were finished data entry by the time the physical score sheet arrived in the hands of our “Runner” ready to go neatly in the physical chronological file. Umpire sheets and protest forms came in the same way. The clarity of the score sheet on the iPad Pro was fantastic.
Amazing, … plus you get to keep the score sheet photo as backup.
Further Implications?
If you also publish results by WhatsApp or the soon-coming “Afleet Connect” , your Scoring Office doesn’t actually need to be on the Regatta site. Remote Scoring Support is now a possibility.
Why would you do that?
- Scoring Capability and Skilled Volunteers might be a rare thing locally
- Maybe a large proportion of your volunteer members live a long way away (like Datchet)
- You might want one weekend to score two regattas at once, sharing skills
- You might simply want access to a remote “Scoring Coach” to support the onsite team
At the IOM Worlds, we had a “global” team for Scoring. In addition to Datchet club members, we were supported by a World Class expert living in New Zealand. With WhatsApp voice support we used to dial him in at 0830 and he stayed on the line on WhatsApp conference mode all day. As it turned out, for workload sharing that was vital.
If you use AFleet at your Club, it is dead easy to send the small Afleet “Export” file into the Scorer WhatsApp Group any the end of each heat. Aside from automatically backing up your Afleet regatta versions per heat, the key advantage is that any remote Afleet tablets being used for the Regatta (eg Scoring Coach) will always be saying the same as the Afleet tablet at the finish line. We just ran this system at the UK DF65 Nationals for the remote Scoring Coach. Totally brilliant.. You should try it.
We cannot speak highly enough of WhatsApp in this environment. You need a good mobile signal (which we have out on the courses) , or good wifi in your building. You can read more that we have already written on WhatsApp for Radio Sailing at this link below:-
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Datchet Radio Sailing - Making It All Much Easier !! 