Sailonline.org update

Gänget bakom SailPlanner och Sailonline.org kämpar på. Tyvärr får de inte ihop ekonomin. Vi hade en diskussion i våras om svårigheterna i att prissätta den här typen av tjänster på ett vettigt sätt. Dels är det relativt få användare (även om man hade >1000 deltagare i senaste racet), men priskänsligheten är också relativt hög (gratis är väldigt ofta tillräckligt bra). Samma sak gäller SailPlanner, som verkligen är en kanontjänst, men även där måste man ha massor av användare för att kalkylerna skall gå ihop.

Så stötta dem på de sätt som går. Och rätt typ av investerare är säkert välkomna de med. Hoppas det håller, för det här gänget är en frisk fläkt!

Financial difficulties
You might not know it but Sailonline.org is currently bleeding financially. The cost for development, maintenance and servers etc is currently by far exceeding the income from membership payments. In the long run we truly believe that we can live on SYC memberships but the current rate of growth is lower than we expected. For SOL to survive we simply need it to become more self sustaining.

If you are interested in helping us you can:

• Becoming member in the Sailonline Yacht Club (SYC)
• Advertise in the client
• Donate using the donation bucket on the website
• Spread the word! Forums, chats etc

A great leg 2 of the Sailonline Ocean Race
The leg 2 of the Sailonline Ocean Race have been absolutely great, and I’ve personally enjoyed it immensely. Big congratulations to our winner brainaid (Germany), but lets not forget the achievment by runner ups – mac (Poland) second place and Xinanhook (Spain) on third. Many of us (including me!) is still fighting to get through the doldrums, keep the beer cool for us. SOR Leg 2 final top 10: 1. brainaid, 2. mac, 3. Xinanhook, 4. skantorp, 5. K3, 6. Cruzist, 7. Lattjolajbanladan, 8. HolidayTours, 9. mookie2, 10. NZL_Sunburst.

Sailonline Yacht Club Sailonline Ocean Race 2008/2009 current ranking and do not forget the SYC membership ranking

Race Schedule

• Cochin in-port race December 6th 18:00 UTC (register now!)
• …some more short races before the Leg3 might be run, be alert!
• Sailonline Ocean Race Leg 3 December 13th 09:00 UTC (Preliminary!)

Sailplanner
Routing is always on the agenda and we have decided to make Sailplanner available for free for VO70-routing. By doing this we somewhat change our business model for Sailplanner and hope for more users. Routing with other polars than the default ones with require subscription. You can get Sailplanner here and use your standard SOL-account. Note that the VO70-polar in Sailplanner is not exactly the same as we use in SOL… since that would be cheating ;-)

Party
SOL is trying out having a club house in Second Life, and we’d like to invite EVERYONE for a SOL party December 6th, 20:00 UTC. For those who aren’t familiar with Second Life it is a massive 3D virtual world where you can walk around, chat, sail (yes!) and much much more. Zowee has written a short step by step list on how to get to the SOL club house here.