History of HalSail

Early development

Spring 2014 Decision taken to implement the long-standing goal of making a web-based version of HAL's Race Results.
During 2015-20120td> Gradual introduction of new features, including:
  • standard handicap dictionary for PY, NHC and Small Cat Schemes;
  • uploading boats from Excel spreadsheet;
  • cross-tab display of boats and classes;
  • calculation of start times for pursuit races.
  • Analysis of handicap performance and uploading of PY results to the RYA database
  • Show results for most recent day of races in sequence on a large screen. Each set of results is shown for a few seconds, followed by the next in a repeating slide show.
  • Allow public access to results to be embargoed, while keeping access for users who are logged in. This can be used to avoid the public seeing results that are not yet complete, or results that have not yet been scrutinised.
  • ORC triple number scoring with different handicaps for low, medium and high wind strengths.
  • Public entry forms for events.
  • New public results page for an event. Available from the Results / Get public links menu
  • Time to win page for handicap races showing which boats could still win the race after at least one boat has finished.
  • Ability to put your club banner, left-hand logo and right-hand logo on the top of all public results pages
  • Ability to put your event banner, left-hand logo and right-hand logo on the top of all public results pages to override any club banner or logo
  • Staggered starts   for races when boats do not all start together.
  • Added QR code generator to the public links page. Use this to print out QR codes that people can scan with their phones or tablets.
  • Calculate results by helm, rather than by boat. This includes guest helms, so is useful where helms frequently swap boats during a series.
  • Integration with SailEvent

Changes during 2021

1 January 2021
  • Reinstated the welcome page when a user logs into an account with no data in it.
  • Add WhatsApp to the email and Twitter options when sending results from a phone.
  • Allow users to specify a tie between boats in a level race on a phone (as they can already on a laptop or desktop).
  • Invoices can be sent as pdf documents
  • New result status abbreviation NSC (did not sail the course) added, as per Racing Rules of Sailing 2021-2024
  • High-points scoring added to complement the standard low-points system set out in Racing Rules of Sailing Appendix A.
    This FAQ shows  details of all the scoring systems available.
  • Countdown page added to phone app showing time remaining to next flag raising or lowering event.
31 January 2021
  • Changed the routine to send results to the archive (ex CRS) to direct access to the database, not using CRSIF.
  • Improved the way your results are sent to the Hal archive server.
  • New video of how to spring clean your HalSail account ready for a new season.
10 February 2021
  • Cured bug that meant that series ties with HP or RORC scoring had wrong rank
  • ROs can tally boats out and assign guest helms and/or crews on a full-size screen, not just phones.
16 February 2021
  • Cured bug that meant that caused an exception if class flag was null when showing countdown page.
  • Selector explanations shown as tooltips on result pages and at the bottom of the page
24 February 2021
  • Allow race officers to import results from a spreadsheet.
  • Add a new series switch to show boat notes on result pages.
  • New page to list competitors assigned as guest helms and crews for a race
  • Race notes to show in header page of public results. Main use is to add a reason for cancelled races, such as "Gale force winds"
12 March 2021
  • Scrolling on BigScreen displays
  • Cured bug that caused exception when showing results of a sery where the ScoreBase table was incomplete. Still don't know why it is not always set up when sery is created, but is now completed the first time results are comuted.
23 March 2021
  • Result status TLE (Time limit expired) added
  • BigScreen display for an event.
  • Start delay in staggered starts can now be input to the nearest second, not just whole minutes.
6 April 2021
  • Series with embargo status set to Hidden_AlwaysEmbargo are completely hidden from public view. They do not appear in drop-downs to choose results on the public pages.
  • When loading participants in a race that have tallied out in SailEvent, match boat type as well as sail number.
  • Export pursuit race start times to an Excel spreadsheet.
  • Cured bug in count-down page on phones that showed the wrong time once summer time came into force.
  • The ShowError page modified so as not to send long parameter strings and cause further errors.
7 May 2021
  • Allow race officers to add missing boats provisionally on their phones, if permitted by their account's settings.
  • Cured bug when updating the score bases for old series that were missing some entries.
13 May 2021
  • Restored top left and right logos on public result pages and on event pages
  • Dictionary of log items
7 June 2021
  • Set limit of 200 results in an introductory account before payment.
  • Add class flag to round sheets.
  • Improved way to show results, or any other web pages, on a large screen.
  • Added popup to enter results page reminding users which races have been selected.
  • Cured bug when users entered BowText over 10 characters. Ditto for SailText (20 chars) and RacingClass flags (10 chars).
29 June 2021
  • Optional parameter 'HideOverall' added to public results (eg, https://www.HalSail.com/Result/Public/1234?HideOverall) to hide the overall results of a series.
  • Round sheets (spotter sheets) can be produced with and without columns for each round.
  • Changed the contact phone number to the Vodafone mobile (07880 520672).
  • Acknowledge previous payments on emails sending invoices, or emphasise that it is an introductory account.
  • Cured bug that lost guest helm or crew when updating result status on a phone.
  • Caching duration for public results extended to 2 minutes.
11 August 2021
  • Racing class and series names added to printouts of individual race results.
  • When importing boats from a spreadsheet, boat notes are concatenated with the old notes on update.
  • Cured bug in results with time penalties (PTA or PTP codes).
18 August 2021
  • Race officers and other people that are logged in can see embargoed results.
23 November 2021
  • Result printouts for individual races, all races on a particular day and overall series rankings downloaded as pdf files, rather than being printed directly from the web pages.
  • IRC ratings downloaded daily from the RORC database and used as standard handicaps in IRC classes.
  • Improvements to the way standard handicaps from RYA PY, NHC, Small Catamaran Scheme and Australian Sailing Yardsticks are displayed and used.

Changes during 2022

1 January 2022
  • Improvements to archiving. You no longer need to set up an archive account separately. That is now done automatically in HalSail,
  • Timestamps at the bottom of printouts and pdfs corrected for timezones different from that of the server.
  • Improvement to Club/All page to allow one-click payments
  • Anybody can pay with Stripe as long as they have the correct UserID in the link. Test for an admin user removed.
18 January 2022
  • Cured bug that showed sail number rather then boat name in certain public results pages on phones.
22 February 2022
  • Added ability for race officers to cancel or abandon races from the Results / Choose races screen. Ditto on phone screens by clicking the same button as is used to change the race start time.
  • When preselecting competitors on the Results / Choose races screen you can now copy the selections from the previous race in the series. This helps when several races take place on one day and you expect the same boats to take part in them all with the same guest helms and crews.
  • Delete all button added to page that shows boats that are not in a racing class and page of boats with no results, avoiding the need to delete them one at a time.
  • Ability to set the number of places to show on the Series Winners page
  • Ability to enter and edit race notes from the Choose Races screen on a desktop or laptop.
  • Max width of xs screen increased to 821 px so as to incorporate later iPads in portrait mode.
  • Ability to unsubscribe a user from general emails. Invoices not sent to unsubscribed admin users, unless there are no club admins that are still subscribed.
20 April 2022
  • Upload all eligible races to the RYA PY Online website in one go, rather than one race at a time.
  • Increased the maximum number of archived result sets from 10 to 20.
  • Receipts for payments are pdf version
  • SignalR progress shown when emailing users from the Hal admin menu
  • Cured bug that stopped users deleting other users unless there were two club admins, not just one
  • Improved speed of public results page for clubs with large numbers of racing classes and series.
31 May 2022
  • Race notes propagate from the base race to a tandem race, unless overridden by notes in the tandem race itself.
  • A warning is given if you try to import results from a spreadsheet or csv file and any of the sail numbers are not recognised. Before the result was ignored with no warning.
  • Enforce secure connection (https://, not http://) in URLs for club banners and logos. This is because modern browsers will not show insecure images on otherwise secure pages.
28 June 2022
  • Cured bug that meant you could not copy a series to the same class with the same races, but later. Thought you were trying to create a tandem series that duplicated the base series.
  • Notification given of any boats that are skipped when uploading results from a spreadsheet.
  • Allow uploading of boat Config from a spreadsheet.
  • Clubs that are in the European Union have the subscription price quoted in Euros. If they are not registered for VAT, they now have VAT added to the price at the appropriate rate for their country. American clubs have the subscription price quoted in US$.
13 July 2022
  • Stripe test accounts used for several demo clubs. These can now pay their subscriptions using Stripe test credit cards without actually costing money.
  • Copy all invoices sent out to sales@halsail.com
  • Export racing class list to a spreadsheet. Importing from a spreadsheet will follow shortly.
30 August 2022
  • QR code added to the HalSail home page for users to scan on their phones to add the HalSail app to their home screen.
  • Made the page that shows a sequence of results on a big screen degrade gracefully if there are too many pages in the sequence. If there would otherwise be too many, it cuts out individual race results and only shows overall series results.
  • Updated procedures for importing things from spreadsheets and csv files. You can import racing classes, add races and series to the schedule, import boats and import results. In each case the system reads the spreadsheet and shows a preview of what is there and how it will affect the data in your account. You can then choose to go ahead, or remove one or more of the items before importing, or cancel the whole operation.
  • Cured bug that prevented users applying bespoke style sheets to their public results.
  • Added a Telegram share button to the Web, print, email, tweet page in the Results menu.
  • Pdf files made from result pages now include the selector parameter, so you can print out just the results of boats with a certain selector.
8 September 2022
  • Added google GA4 to the analytics js call.
  • Send copies of receipts to all club admins.
  • Google analytics GA4 script added.
13 September 2022
  • Cured bug that prevented you sending emails to boats, either from the Boats menu or from a particular event.
  • Cured bug affecting the loading of level race results from a csv file.
  • Google analytics GA4 events added with conversions for uploading to PYOnline.
7 November 2022
  • New layout for home page on both full-size devices and phones with a picture background
  • Result printouts open as pdf in new browser tag, rather than downloading to a folder on the user's computer
21 November 2022
  • Download handicap analysis results and turnout analysis to a spreadsheet.
  • Warning on logged-in home page if subscription will expire within 35 days. Automatically redirect to the payment page if any user attempts to login to an expired account.
21 November 2022
  • Download handicap analysis results and turnout analysis to a spreadsheet.
  • Warning on logged-in home page if subscription will expire within 35 days. Automatically redirect to the payment page if any user attempts to login to an expired account.

Changes during 2023

3 January 2023
  • Improve speed of public results pages by encoding class and series drop-downs without callbacks. Cache all public output pages on both server and client for 5 minutes.
  • YTC fully supported as a basic type of handicap, rather than relying on PY handicaps with local name YTC. You can choose YTC as the type of handicap for any racing class.  
  • Set up a new tandem series directly from the Schedule menu.
10 February 2023
  • Use Hangfire to schedule IRC downloads and to send emails using AuthSMTP.
  • Cured bug that prevented race officers switching between entering clock times and stopwatch times.
9 March 2023
  • Cured bug that uploaded non-finishers to the PYOnline website.
  • Cured bug in handicap analysis that included poor performers in the boat stats and the boat type stats.
23 March 2023
  • Participants now downloaded into the tally table from SailEvent by event, not by series name.
  • Added api to send a sailor's scoring abbreviation from SailEvent to HalSail when they tally in
3 April 2023
  • Upload results to Irish Sailing's SailEvent website
12 May 2023
  • Revised look and improved speed for pages users that are not logged in.
20 June 2023
  • Use a KeyCDN content delivery network to show public result pages, including big screen.
  • Stopped sailors registering for an event from seeing phone numbers and email addresses of other sailors by typing in a sail number.
  • Stopped timeouts when collecting tallies from SailEvent from causing debug errors and stopping ROs from inputting results.
  • Updated on 20230622 to cure bug that caused an exception when the selection flags field for a boat was null
5 July 2023
  • Added panel at bottom of public results page to filter by selector
  • Added logos URLs to the upload to Irish Sailing's SailEvent website
  • Cured bug that marked races that were embargoed as No result yet when a non-logged-in user tried to display them
15 August 2023
  • Scoring penalties for SCP, XPA and ZFP continue to default to 20%, but can be varied if needed.
  • Improvements to loading racing classes, boats, schedule of races and results from Excel or csv files, including allowing for the data not being in the first spreadsheet in the workbook.
  • Prevent users adding a new race to a series with the same start time as another race in the series.
  • Default RDG set to RDG2 - average all races except DNC, rather than the previous RDG4 - 2nd place.  
  • Added links to the latest results in each racing class to the public links page.
  • Cured intermittent bug that resulted in a database error with two results with the same RaceID and HcapID.
  • Cured bug that caused race status set to no results yet when an embargoed race was displayed.
16 August 2023
  • Cured bug introduced at last update that prevented users uploading a csv file of classes, boats, races or results.
5 September 2023
  • Public results show all the races in a series, even if none have been sailed. Previously it just showed a message saying there were no results for that series.
  • Send invoices, rather than quotations, to clubs that have previously paid a subscription.
  • Emails from the contact page to cc the email address of the person that completed the online form. This helps reply correctly to the user.
  • Cured bug that stopped users saving handicaps of ECHO and NHC races from the Analyse Handicaps page
  • Remove tallies that are more than a week old automatically each night.
15 October 2023
  • New option to download results by helm to an Excel spreadsheet. This is a new checkbox popup on the edit results page.
  • Delete all DNC results every night using Hangfire.
  • There is a new icon at the top of the winners page to download series winners to a csv file. A csv file is made directly from the page in your browser, rather than recalculating all the results back on the server. You can open the csv file in Excel if you wish to format it.
1 November 2023
  • RDF scoring abbreviation added - Redress Given as a Finisher. Similar to DPI in that the boat counts as a finisher and is given a place, but its score is set to the points specified by a protest panel or jury.
  • National flags. There is a new option to show a picture of the flag corresponding to the national authority letters shown on a boat's sails, as per RRS Appendix G. This is controlled by a new series switch called show/hide country flag. If this switch is set on, a small picture of the national flag is shown next to the boat's sail number on public result pages.
  • Scoring a series by helm is only meaningful if some of the boats have been sailed by guest helms. The button to score by helm is now only shown if at least one boat has been helmed by a guest in at least one race.

Changes during 2024

3 April 2024
  • Change to Bootstrap 5 styling to give a completely new look and feel to the website, in particular improving the way it works on smartphones.
29 April 2024
  • Several minor changes to the way results are displayed to the public, including the option to show all races in the overall results on a phone even if it means horizontal scrolling and better alignment of the first column of results (ie the rank in the series or the place in each race).
  • Cured bug that prevented the display of results filtered by selector.
  • Guest helm and crew suggested automatically from the previous race on that day, if there is one. Race officer has the opportunity to override the suggestion when putting in the result.
7 May 2024
  • Changed Stripe Webhook secret to that for www.halsail.com rather than wip3.halsail.com
  • Added rewrite rule to redirect halsail.com to www.halsail.com
  • Cured bug that recorded the race officer's name and the wind conditions only for the first race selected.
21 May 2024
  • Race officers can import competitors from previous races on the same day, which is useful for back-to-back races for the same classes.
  • Tandem races are now shown on the public calendar so that users can click to see their results, just like base races.
  • The default action has been changed when importing boats from a spreadsheet  , Hal file or SailEvent. As before, users have the ability to change the action for each boat by means of drop-down lists on the preview page, but the preselected option varies.
    If the numerical sail number (what is written on the sail, excluding any letters) is not the same as that of any existing boat, the new-boat option is preselected.
    If there is a boat already in the boat register with this numerical sail number, there will be three options: ignore the new boat, update the existing boat, or add as a new boat. The preselected option will be as follows:
    • If the complete sail number, including letters, of the boat being imported is the same as that of an existing boat, and they are of the same type, assume they are duplicates and preselect the ignore option.
    • If the complete sail number of the boat being imported is the same as that of an existing boat, but the type of boat is different, preselect the new-boat option.
    • If the complete sail number is different, albeit with the same numerical number, and the type of boat is the same, preselect the update option.
    • If the complete sail number is different, albeit with the same numerical number, and the type of boat is different, preselect the new-boat option.
25 June 2024
  • Show handicap analysis of individual races from the public results pages. A new button has been added to the title bar of each race result in a handicap series to bring up a table of how each boat performed relative to its handicap, such as 2% faster, 4% slower.
  • Integration with SailEvent extended to allow sailors to tally in with scoring abbreviation 'OK' and a finish time. Sailors' tallies never override a result input by the RO.
17 September 2024
  • As has always been the case, users are automatically logged out if they do not use the system for 30 minutes. This has sometimes caused confusion as it is not always obvious what has happened. Now the user is automatically returned to the home screen with an overlay message explaining what has happened and inviting them to login again.
  • The time-to-win button has been reinstated on public result pages for handicap races after it was inadvertently removed in a previous update. The resulting page has also been revised to show boats that already have a non-finishing score (such as OCS) properly.
  • Cured bug that caused race start times to be one second early when imported from a spreadsheet. Occurred when the spreadsheet had used series fill to get the start times, resulting in them being a few milliseconds out.

Changes during 2025

7 January 2025
  • Round race start times to nearest second when importing from a spreadsheet. Cures bug that arose from excel adding or subtracting a few milliseconds.
  • Impose price increase from 1 March 2025
4 February 2025
  • Add PHRF time-on-distance handicaps.
20 February 2025
  • FirstUse and LastUpdate columns added to most tables. FirstUse is set by the SQL Default GETDATE() when the record is first entered. FirstUse never changes. LastUpdate needs to be entered from code whenever the record is updated.
  • The archive routine now allows you to choose which series to upload to a result set, rather than uploading all the series in your account. You can choose by the date of the first race in the series. So you could choose those races from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024, for instance.
  • Club admin support users can be added to any club for help when investigating problems. Set from the club details popup in HalAdmin / Clubs.
4 March 2025
  • Results are automatically served from our content distribution network (KeyCDN) rather than directly from the HalSail server. This reduces the load on our server when there is a lot of activity, such as when a large number of big races are finishing and all the crews want to see their results. It means that results can be up to 5 minutes out of date.
  • Hal admin can add a support user to any account in order to help with problems.
15 April 2025
  • Set description for individual pages in the tag at the head of each page. Ditto for the title of each page.
  • Added the handicap at the end of each series to Irish Sailing's API. Used only to be provided for progressive (ECHO) series.
  • Cured a bug that prevented users importing results from csv files or spreadsheets using stopwatch timing, as opposed to clock timing.
20 May 2025
  • Improved the way the racing-class and series dropdown lists are displayed in public results pages, putting them in a more logical order and emphasising which classes and series have results and which do not have any yet.
  2025 - HalSail Ltd. Site code updated on 27 May 2025 at 15:57:58
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