During the winter of our discontent (grin)
I am trying to gauge the interest for a website for automated ON LINE Registration PLUS the ability to debit your credit card for pre payment.
(The Annapolis Yacht club has just such a system and they love it! Check out last year's Rolex Women's Championship portal.) A similar system would be available to us catsailors!!
Once the system is set up... each regatta/club could link to the pre registration page for their event. Racers would register for the event. Collect their early bird discount, and by using secure internet banking schemes ... pay with their credit card number.
The list of sailors and fleets would be automatically updated and your clubs account would be paid.
On Race Day... download the data to your scoring program... Add in the on site registrants and go racing!
The system that I have examined allows for race results, NOR's, Sailing Instuctions all to be posted on the site and linked from your club's web page.
If the idea catches fire with us sailors ... I would think that Builders, Dealers and Vendors would gladly cover the overhead in order to support cat racing in the country!
Comments please!!!
Mark
That sounds great to me. I proposed accepting credit cards in our fleet and got shot down because of the hassle. If the set-up procedure is easy, I'll push it at our next board meeting (next week). What sort of fee does the service collect and where can I get more information?
Hi Mark,
We wrote an in-house program to do the same thing, but decided to stop short of taking the money. That was easy enough to do, but it seems that most folks would just as soon pay upon arrival.
The good part about our software is that it exports directly to Sailwave (the best scoring software known to man)
At any rate, it would be something to experiment with.
Rick