RANT: Regatta websites

By Jerome Fournier – San Diego:
Just a quick note to regatta web designers: When armchair sailors log onto your regatta website they are first and foremost searching for the race results. It is so discouraging to log onto a website during the course of a multi-day event, search high and low for the results page and when you finally get there discover that the results are not there, are days old or, in the case of my current search, when finally found, formatted in such a way to make them incomprehensible.

Regatta organizers need to contract with web designers that know sailing and know the importance of providing the world with the most current information about the racing that is occurring in some far off port. To the organizers of the Bacardi Cup, why is there no “Results” button on the top of the regatta homepage that leads one directly to the regatta results? The quest for the most up-to-date scores are the reason ESPN and other sports websites place them prominently on the first page. It is the information we all want to know.