About Telltale

Why “Telltale”

Every sail carries telltales: short lengths of wool or ribbon that stream in the wind and show, at a glance, whether the air is flowing cleanly over the sail. They are the oldest instruments in sailing and still the most honest. No battery, no calibration, no opinion. They simply show what is happening.

Telltale Racing is built to do the same for a club race: capture it automatically and have it ready to watch the moment the race is over, with as little admin as possible and preferably none. You finish, sit in the cockpit and look at your start. Back in the club, everyone can see the same race on the screen while the results are worked out: who was over the line, who was late, where the wind was. Nothing deep, just what the tracks show, and enough to argue about. Parents and friends on the shore can watch it live. Boats carrying an AIS transmitter are seen automatically; any other boat can be seen with the free phone tracker.

It is made for clubs. A race that people can watch, live and afterwards, is the easiest way a club has to show what it does, to its own members and to anyone else looking. The aim is every club on one platform, delivering what the public actually want to see, for a nominal cost.

The two streamers in the logo are telltales. The AIS receivers that volunteers run along the coast are called Telltales too: each one tells us a little of what is happening on the water.

Built in Wellington by Mike Beck, so that every club race gets recorded and watched, not just the ones someone had the time and the equipment to record. Telltale records Wellington Harbour with an $80 USB dongle and a laptop. Automatically.