So I've been thinking for awhile that GPS data on its own isn't enough really. How do you know what the wind is doing? Sure you might be going faster, but there may be a few more knots of breeze, you may be cracked off a bit...sooo many variables exist. Putting a big boat data system on a dinghy is not feasible.
On the drawing board has been an affordable wind guage/anemometer that can be mounted on a dinghy. There's been many sketches, but most have a fatal flaw. Electronics are getting more accessible and feature rich, just look at the smartphones, why not implement something for dinghy sailing. Then this came along...
http://www.nkhome.com/kestrel/kestrel-4500/
This piece of kit is allowing me to test some ideas to see if some sort of wind recording device is feasible/affordable for dinghy sailors. It might be that just a windvane mount for it is necessary as opposed to a dedicated electronic device. There are a lot of options from a fully featured miniature computer system to a bare bones data logger. I see no reason a small smartphone can't be setup in a waterproof box to record and possibly output to a display the real-time performance data of a sailing dinghy.
I mounted it on a weather vane on the bike and rode around the local criterium circuit on a windy day to get some data. Playing with it now and will post on the results once I have them sorted.
Excuse the short, rambling post, I'm sick.
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