As our sport becomes ever more popular (the association has grown by 16% in the past two years) more canoes are entered in each event at a regatta and the job of determining finish order and time has become that much more difficult.

To help alleviate that burden Moku O Hawai'i is introducing FinishLynx by Lynx System Developers, Inc. to outrigger canoe paddling in the islands, both for our own regattas and the HCRA State Championship (to be held in Hilo Bay on August 1st, 2009).

The following images were all obtained during the testing period of the system and utilised sub-optimal mounting structures that introduced a lot of vibration. The high speed camera is very sensitive to such vibration which, though it does not affect the timing system does produce less than desirable images. For future regattas the camera system will be mounted on a much more stable platform, provided by I&R Utility Line Excavating and Hawai'i Electric Light Company.

The operator uses images (such as this one), to determine the order of finsh and the time of finish (accurate to thousandths of a second). The camera takes a picture of the finish line one pixel wide and 2000 pixels high at up to 2000 frames per second and then butts these single pixel frames together to produce the image shown. This is the reason that the paddlers and their paddles look distorted - they are moving through the finish line at different speeds depending where in the stroke the paddler is. The slower an element is moving through the finish line the "longer" it appears, and vice versa. However, the canoe is moving through the finish line at roughly constant speed and appears less distorted.

Simply by placing the cursor on the bow of the canoe the system identifies the lane the canoe is in and the time it passed through the finish line. The vertical yellow bars show the times at which the canoes passed through the line, and the numbers indicate the lanes in which those canoes are traveling. The vertical broken white lines indicate periods when the camera was not recording.

Also, notice the green flag being blown into the field of view of the camera. One drawback of our flag system for lanes is that if the wind is blowing directly across the course the flags can be aligned in the field of view of the camera and obscure the view.

These results can then be saved to a file which is read by the RaceDay registration and results software untouched by human hand, and therefore not prone to transcription errors.

Starts may also be adjudicated by the FinishLynx system. In this example, the red vertical bar shows zero time, the start of the race. Notice that lane 6 gets a great start but is clearly not over the start line. A couple of other things to notice:

1. The bows of the canoes are elongated as the canoes are picking up speed through the plane of the camera.

2. The image is reversed as the canoes are passing through plane of the camera in the opposite direction than they finish. This is correctable using a setting in the software.

3. The lanes do not line up with the canoes as the canoes start on the "other" side of the flag they finish on.

4. Big white numbers show really clearly, small yellow ones less so.

The system is really very accurate and can make even the most difficult calls obvious. The two canoes in this example are separated by six thousandths of a second (0.006s), about half an inch, and yet even at 200 yards away it is clear which canoe finished first.

With each use of the system we get closer to the ideal - fair, accurate and repeatable results.

Jonathan Grayson

President, Moku O Hawai'i