Integrated mast electronics, and racing

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As most know, I've been a long-time fan of integrated, mast mounted electronics to aid the race crew in making tactical decisions. RaceMaster, ProStart, Shift, RaceGeek, Nautilytics, Atlas, I've had them all on the boat at the mast. But no combination has got it all right; maybe until now.


The team at Sailmon has been building the Sailmon MAX for a few years now, and I've always been a fan. To the point where I was one of the original pre-order MAX customers! But it took a few years and a few turns until I get them on BlueJ. And in a neat twist, I'm now responsible for Sailmon in the USA. What goes around comes around.

What really excites me about the MAX is its ability to integrate into existing boat electronics. In the picture above, the lower MAX is displaying data from BlueJ's NMEA 2000 network via a WiFi gateway. Through the water speed, and true wind angle and speed.  And no wires!

So now for about $2000 (same in euro) you can have a dual MAX display, with compass, lift/knock, water-speed, and true wind data. All logged and shareable. True wind is SO important when sailing your polar angles downwind. Between 6 and 16 knots, the down-wind polar angle is 15 degrees  wider, and it pays to pay attention!

This modified Polar diagram show it all. When the TRUE wind angle does not seem much wider, the APPARENT wind angle (in BLUE) between 6 and 8 knots is basically on the beam! Sailing this with the kite seems strange and is like tacking down-wind, but it is indeed fast.



Having this data on the mast where trimmer, driver, and tactician can see it makes all the difference. And all of this data is logged, and can be combined with video for sharing and training. Here we do a practice gibe before a race.















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