HELP - I NEED TAGGING!

[happymeal]

Afternoon all!

 

I do a bit of charity work with Blackburn Sea Cadets and we've been asked to partake in a national event where we all sail at our collective sailing areas in a combined effort to log enough mileage to sail around the UK (Similar to the group of guys that would "run" to Paris on a treadmill by running a few miles each - except on water and in a boat) to raise money for the Charity.

 

Now the biggest task I have to worry about (Apart from man power, nobody drowning, etc), is to log the distance that all of the boats will cover.

 

I'm aiming for around 8 Picos (Small light-weight boats) and I have a "physical" course laid out of around a mile. But the problem is that I need to log the actual mileage they cover (Including tacking and adjusting for wind, etc). So they have a mile-long course, but they may sail slightly more than that while doing it so I can't use a visual count - ie, counting how many times they lap the mile course as a reference.

 

I'm interested in knowing if there's some way of tracking the mileage - I was looking into a GPS-type chip or something along the lines of a running chip that would track the total distance covered. The boats are VERY small and there's no way to secure a bulky object to it.

 

Does anyone have any better ideas, or know someone-in-the-know, or a company that would be willing to help in return for publicity?

[LosOjos]

Could you use something like MapMyRide on a cheap Android device maybe?

[Techie-v2]

I use google's "My Tracks" when on the bike

[happymeal]

I thought about that - but:

 

a) Each of the eight boats would have to have a device capable of running that (ie phone?)

b) There's a high chance that the boats may capsize and the phone/device would be damaged/destroyed (Unless their waterproof)

 

I was thinking maybe there was a simpler solution in the same way marathon runners can track their timings via chip?

[TwoZeroAlpha]

The only way I could really see doing this would be a low end GPSr

 

Something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sunroad-Tracker-Keychain-Outdoor-Climbing/dp/B00JSOHMQE/ref=sr_1_33?s=sports&ie=UTF8&qid=1400165233&sr=1-33&keywords=gps in a waterproof plastic box then lash it down to the mast footing.

[Bananas]

Might be worth asking a football club, footballers all wear GPS trackers these days they're in the vests they wear it's how they produce the stats on how far people have run etc. I don't know who makes the things but asking your local pro football team might yield some answers and go from there, they might even lend you some

[visioN]

How about something like a Garmin Forerunner watch? I guess these would also be waterproof