Author: rostermonsters

2019 CASRA schedule is in RailMeets

Posted on by rostermonsters

Chicago Area Sail Racing Association or CASRA released their schedule today and it will be up on RailMeets in the events section on Thursday 1/10/2019. We will be adding more club and organization schedules as we receive them. I promise on Friday I will show you how to add these events to your boats schedule.


http://chicagosailracing.org/races/

Do you have a club schedule that you would would like to have in RailMeets? Send it to us info@railmeets.com We like them best if in .xls or google sheets format but we will accept cocktail napkins as long as the handwriting is legible. For electronic files we usually have them up in 24hrs, cocktail napkins take a little longer.

Refine your boat clasifications

Posted on by rostermonsters

We recently added some more new features. We expanded the types of boat clarification for your profile. You can now select from four different boat types. 1) Small One-Design Keelboat, think Rhodes 19, Soling, Etchells, B) Large One-Design Keelboat, think J/24, J105, Tartan 10 Farr 40 etc, III) Handicap Keelboat and d) Multihull for those of you that just cant get enough speed!

To change your settings click on your picture in the upper right corner than My Info, then My Profile, then Edit. You can now select what types of boats you are interested in. Don’t forget to click on update.

If you are a boat owner and let’s say you have a Rhodes 19 and you are looking for a foredeck. You can go to the crew finder, click on Small Keelboat and then click on foredeck and voila there are some prospects.

Happy hunting

Sydney to Hobart

Posted on by rostermonsters

Merry Christmas to all our users. We hope you are having a great holiday. If you are spending it with family and the discussion with old weird Uncle Harold gets to politics and you need a diversion? Here great reason to excuse yourself and go to the other room, the Rolex Sydney to Hobart race. 628 Nautical miles and some say the most grueling yacht race in the world.

Race starts at at noon on 12/26 (Boxing day) Australia time. Because it’s on the other side of this great big blue ball that we live on we can catch the start on Christmas day 8PM USA central time (9PM eastern). The Cursing Yacht Club of Australia always puts on great coverage of the start, their yacht tracker is excellent and lots of interesting content on their site. Here is the link

http://www.rolexsydneyhobart.com/

SMS Messaging is now live

Posted on by rostermonsters

Here in the northern hemisphere the boats are away but in preparation for next year we are still adding features to RailMeets.  A very much requested feature has been SMS messaging, it is now live. You can set the system to send a text message to your crew for any last minute updates. There are two parts to setting it up. First you and your crew need to set up your profile. Login and then click on your picture in the upper right corner (mobile users look for the three bars in the upper right corner). Select My Info and then click on Edit.  Make sure you have your cell phone number in the phone number space and that the flag for country is correct. Click on Submit. Then click on My Settings and then Edit. In the Notifications pane, next to Last Minute Updates check SMS and then Update. That’s it, you are now ready to receive text messages from RailMeets.

When you need to send a last minute text to your crew do the following. From your dashboard click your boat name, that will bring up a list of events, find the event that you need to send the text for, then click on the envelope to send a message.

A window will pop up for you to type your message. Check the box for “Send as last minute notification (SMS if chosen by crew)” In a few seconds your phone will ding with a message. If your crew does not have SMS messaging set up in RailMeets they will get an old fashioned email.



Manage your Volunteers

Posted on by rostermonsters

It’s been a few weeks since I posted here but rest assured we have been busy. We exterminated a few bugs, been talking to OD fleets about future features, introduced SMS or text messaging (more on that next week) and what has been keeping us real busy is Race Committee Volunteer Management.  RailMeets can now be used to manage your clubs race assets, volunteers, PRO’s, marks , boats, heck even the party areas. It’s designed to make your Race Committees life easier.   The best part if your club is a RailMeets subscriber and you volunteer your assignments will appear on your Dashboard right next to your sailing commitments.  You can view your clubs entire RC schedule at a glance. Is your regular boat out of town? You can now check and see if your RC needs some help. Tracking tools for the RC to see who had done their assignments and who still needs to volunteer. Want to learn more send us a note info@railmeets.com

And now the end is near…

Posted on by rostermonsters

Sad reality is the season is winding down in the northern hemisphere (stop gloating you California and Caribbean users). That doesn’t mean RailMeets can’t be useful. For my boat I just put in a bunch of events for putting the boat away and a Crew BBQ. Here is how you do that. From your dashboard find the boat that you want to set up an event for and click on Events for that boat. Next click on Add Event. From there just fill out the form.

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Top Tip – Visibility to All makes it public event, great for fleet parties and club work parties. Clicking on Crew will make it visible only to your crew. Top Tip #2 – Use Meeting on Dock for when you want the crew to show up at your house, Leaving Dock time for when you are lighting the BBQ grill and Race Time for when dinner is served. Or Meet on dock for when you want the work party to arrive Leaving Dock for when you leave the harbor after taking the mast down and Race time for when you get to the boat yard and then go for chili at Lindy’s Screen Shot 2018-09-25 at 10.41.07 AM.png

Bring your other friends along

Posted on by rostermonsters

Here is a cool use for RailMeets. Do you have any four legged crew members? No I am not talking about your rabid bow man but that k9 that always seems to be hanging out on the boat. It’s easy just put them on as a guest or if they have skills set up another account for them. Then your crew will know when to bring the doggy treats. Here Captain John and “Sailor” discuss tactics.

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RailMeets success story

Posted on by rostermonsters

Earlier this week I received a message via the RailMeets messaging system from Alex. He was in Chicago on business and was looking to get out for a race. We had a spot on my boat so I added him as a guest. You can add guests by going to the Change My Signups screen. For any event tap on the two people and a box will open, there you can indicate the number of guests. IMG_7617.jpg

 

Alex showed up at the appointed time, gear bag in one hand six pack of good beer in the other. He helped us rig the boat for the first CCYC pursuit race. For those of you that don’t know what a pursuit races is the Race Committee takes everyone’s handicaps and calculates the start time based on everyone finishing at the same time. So every boat with a different rating starts at a different time. We slot in after the T-10’s but just before our main rival a Farr39.

How did it go? We started late, had a decent upwind leg, passed a boat on the reaching leg. We then headed downwind into heavy fog. During a botched spinnaker take-down in the fog we lost sight of the fleet and the next mark. We missed the mark and realized our mistake when we sailed out of the fog and noticed everyone else on a different angle. We withdrew, opened some beers and sailed around a bit before heading in. On the way in we hit the heavy fog again. Predictably the GPS batteries died but fortunately one of the crew had his phone on him. Google maps, the ships compass and going slow got us home.

After we hung out in the club with our new friend Alex, a good time was had by all.

Do you have a RailMeets success story? Send us an email and tell us about it. If we use your story we’ll send you a nifty new RailMeets hat. IMG_7616.jpgIMG_7608.jpgIMG_7612.jpg

CASRA Tri/Bi-State

Posted on by rostermonsters

In a sure sign that summer is coming to a close this weekend is the Tri/Bi State regatta. For those of you not racing on southern Lake Michigan. This race has been around forever, is always on Labor Day weekend and is one of the most beloved races in the area. Sponsored by Jackson Park and Michigan City Yacht Clubs it starts Friday night from a point just offshore of Chicago near downtown. You watch the Chicago skyline fade over the horizon with the sun setting behind it as you head to St Joe, Michigan. If it is an average race most boats will finish as the sun rises over the Michigan shore. Spend Saturday relaxing on the beach, Sunday race back to Chicago or keep on going for the short hop to Michigan City Indiana. Then on Monday race from Michigan City to Chicago. Always a good time.

As you may know RailMeets has partnered with CASRA to provide a place to store LMPHRF rating certificates and as you know as part of the notice of race you are required to upload them to the site. Go to chicagosailracing.org and select Rating Validation at the top of the screen. That will take you to the login screen. If you are a RailMeets user you can log in the same way you do with RailMeets. Once you are in click on “My Boats”.  Then click on your boat name.  That will bring up your boat profile, scroll down and you will see a blue box that says “Edit Certificates” that will bring up all your certificates, scroll down and you will see “Upload New Certificate” use the browse button to find it on your hard drive. Don’t forget to select share with CASRA and click on submit. You are now in compliance with the NOR. New to the site visit our blog for other tips and tricks including creating your boat and uploading your crew as well as using the crew finders. https://blog.railmeets.com/

Best of luck to our Tri/Bi-State racers and stay safe