event… And every one of them has Luiz to thank for this ready access to the information they want or need.
While the concept of a virtual noticeboard may be as old as webpages it was Yacht Scoring that brought this into practical use. And while use of apps continues to grow and evolve Luiz seemed to always find the right balance between developing new features and keeping the old ones so that his primary customers would not get lost. This is really important in any IT context: often baby steps are better pathways to innovation than big leaps. And Luiz understood this well. For example, when ORC users in the US wanted to have more course model options for scoring Luiz groaned – not because he needed to do more programming, but because he feared more options might sow confusion among his audience. Yet he did the right thing: he embraced the task and reached out to learn more about these options so he could offer them for use in Yacht Scoring and help educate the race managers on their proper use. Luiz moved to the US from Sao Paulo, Brazil some 40 years ago. His father was promoted by Carborundum, a world leader in silicon carbide and abrasives technologies, to a position at their head- quarters in Buffalo, New York, so the family moved there where Luiz attended university and studied mechanical engineering. He worked in that field for a while and took a job in Michigan with a company owned by a well-known local sailor named Ed Palm. This is where Luiz fell in love with sailing and with his easy ability to make friends he quickly became a part of numerous big boat programmes over the years.
‘In the early 2000s he was asked to help score a regatta and learned that for most events it was a struggle,’ said Dick Neville, one of Luiz’s closest colleagues, former Storm Trysail Club commodore and PRO for numerous high-profile events. ‘He thought he could create a scoring program that might simplify the process and speed up the reporting of results. But soon he’d realised that we organisers needed much more than scoring, so he expanded his program into the comprehensive regatta management tool we have today. ‘We worked together to incorporate it at Block Island Race Week, and it was truly a game changer. Luiz loved Storm Trysail Club almost as much as his home club, Bayview Yacht Club [in Detroit]. He was STC Station Captain for the Eastern Great Lakes and was supposed to be the chairman of next year’s Bayview Mackinac Race. ‘I have just spent the summer working with Luiz at five different regattas from Block Island to the Great Lakes. We all know that he was great company and easy to work with; most of us also know that he was usually leading the charge when social time kicked off!’ Fortunately for all of us who go to sea to race Luiz’s passing will not mean the end of Yacht Scoring: within days of his death his family were already working with a local Bayview-based IT team to keep his dream alive.
So thank you, Luiz, for all your friendship and for your massive contribution to the sport of sailing. Dobbs Davis
®
THE FIRST JIB FURLER WITHOUT FOILS
reduced drag and weight
continuous line option
improved safety
reefed
WWW.UBIMAIORIT ALIA .COM UBI MAIoR ITALIA®
SAIL BLOCKS – DECK HARDWARE – CUSTOM PROJECTS
Luiz Kahl: a great friend to sailors but a special friend to sailing SEAHORSE 35 VerticalHalfPage-APR21.pdf 1 18/03/2021 16:39
INGRID ABERY
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116
