Author: John_RailMeets.com

Match Racing Anyone?

Posted on by John_RailMeets.com

Match racing is one of the many areas of this sport that has been growing and in Chicago it has some very devoted sailors, Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club’s Windy City Team Race, Chicago Yacht Club’s Match Race Program or the Chicago Match Race Center, not to mention several programs on the east coast. RailMeets is happy to help you match racers get connected. Go to your crew profile and in the Sailing Types section be sure to check Match Racing. Also there is a Match Racing option for boats. Are you a Skipper for one of these Match Race programs? Set up a boat just for your match racing activities. Check the Show in Boat Finder box and make sure that you select Match Racing for sailing types. You can now use RailMeets to connect with your fellow match racers.

Official crew finder for the 2020 Newport to Bermuda Race

Posted on by John_RailMeets.com

RailMeets is proud to announce that we have been selected as the official North American crew finder for the 2020 Newport to Bermuda race. With RailMeets you can add to your profile that you are available for the race. Go to My Info, then Crew Finder Profile, update, check Newport Bermuda Race and click on update. That’s it, ready to go.

Prospective skippers can search for crew that would like to do the race by using the filters. They can also search on specific skill sets needed to round out the crew.

See the official announcement here…
https://bermudarace.com/race-links-to-online-platforms-to-match-boats-and-crews/

For more information about the race see https://bermudarace.com/

Chicago NOOD or Don’t tell me tell RailMeets

Posted on by John_RailMeets.com

It was great seeing many of you at this past weekends Chicago NOOD regatta. Thank you for your comments suggestions, complements and of course how can I forget sipping rum drinks on a T-10 while giving some training on the RailMeets dashboard. Thanks! But my favorite comment was from a J/109 skipper telling me how RailMeets changed his program, from finding crew to tracking the crew schedules. As he told me, when he gets a text from a crew saying they are available for a race he texts back “Don’t tell me, tell RailMeets!”


How did the boat I was on do? Well after sitting in the fog on Friday we got in four good races on Saturday. We were tied for second (with two other boats tied for first). We really needed a race on Sunday but more pea soup fog prevented that and after all the tie breakers were applied we ended up fourth. Not bad for a new program and a good chunk of the crew picked up from RailMeets.

A race like no other…

Posted on by John_RailMeets.com

There are some sailboat races are special because of where they start, some are special because of where they finish and some are special because of their inherent challenge. Few are special because of all three. The Chicago Yacht Club’s race to Mackinac is one of those races. The race starts with the spectacular Chicago skyline as a backdrop for the start. Then the fleet heads north up Lake Michigan where conditions can range from dead calm with the nasty black fly to major gale force winds and tall choppy waves. 333 Miles later you are transported back in time to Mackinac Island, it’s a race like no other.


RailMeets has partnered with Chicago Yacht Club to provide the official crew finder for the Chicago to Mackinac race. To get yourself set up sign in to your RailMeets account then click on the silhouette (or picture) in the upper right corner, select My Profile. Scroll down to the Crew Finder Profile and select update profile.

Make sure Show on Crew Finder is selected and then scroll down and select Chicago to Mackinac in the Special Events Wanted section. Don’t forget to click on update.

It’s a similar procedure for updating your boats profile if you are looking for crew


Don’t have a RailMeets account? It’s free go to https://railmeets.com/ to learn more.

Chicago Yacht Club members can use https://cyc.railmeets.com/

Your Information

Posted on by John_RailMeets.com

As RailMeets grew our users requested lots of new features some of them required you to input your preferences, account settings, notifications, crew finder profile etc. You had to hunt a bit to find all the places where you could change them. Hunt no more. We gathered them up and they are now all in one place. Click on the silhouette (or your picture) in the upper right corner and select My Info then edit away. Don’t forget to click on Submit when you are done.

Calendar Integration

Posted on by John_RailMeets.com

Did you know you can integrate your RailMeets schedule with your phone, computer or cloud calendar? When you change your signups you will receive a signup notification email. Contained in that email is a file named Roster.ics, it’s basically a meeting notice. Click on that to open it. Your calendar app will ask you to confirm, when you do it will be added to your calendar
The invite is a standard format .ics file that can be handled by all modern email clients, be it Microsoft Outlook, Mac Mail, Yahoo Mail or Google Mail. Learn more at our help center.
https://help.railmeets.com/article/crew-calendar-integration

User Requested Features

Posted on by John_RailMeets.com

Gang this week we added a couple of user requested features. On the MySignups page the header that lists your boats and club is is now fixed. Those of you that crew on multiple boats can see which column is for which boat as you scroll down.

Another requested feature was the ability to email crew about a specific event. Before you had to have at least one person confirmed before the email icon became active, now it’s always active.

And last, if you boat has a lot of events you will be happy to know that we added a confirm button to the top of the screen. Before you had to scroll all the way to the bottom to find it.

Got any other bright ideas? We would love to hear them send us a note.