Race Timer · Wear OS
The start sequence, on your wrist.
Start it on the warning signal, put your arm down, and sail the start instead of watching a stopwatch. Nothing is paired to it and no phone comes aboard.
Who it is for
Anyone who races off a five, four or three minute start and has been squinting at a phone in a dry bag. It also runs the committee side: both race-manager sequences keep counting after the gun, so the boat on the line has an elapsed clock without changing screens, and the finish time freezes when you end the race.
Use it as a training and convenience aid, not as the start line. Under the racing rules the committee's flags are what count and the sounds are only there to draw your eye, so if the watch and the flags disagree, sail the flags.
What it does
Six sequences are built in: US Sailing 5-4-1-Go, Scholastic for ICSA racing, a club 3-2-1-Go, the two race-manager versions, and a custom start at any whole number of minutes.
The face changes colour as the start runs down, so you can read it at arm's length without focusing — navy while you have time, amber through the last minute, red through the final ten seconds, green at the gun. Every signal has its own vibration pattern, matched to what you hear, so a cue feels the shape it sounds.
If the flag went up before your thumb landed, tap Sync during the countdown and it snaps to the whole minute.
The cues are pinned to the watch's own clock, so they land sub-second on real hardware. The countdown keeps running with the screen dark and the app put away, and if the watch stops it mid-sequence it comes back on the same clock and asks whether to resume rather than deciding for you.
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Running
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Last minute
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Final ten
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Gun
Get it
Wear OS, free, still in testing
- Runs on
- A Wear OS watch on Android 11 or newer. It runs on its own — there is no phone half to install.
- Price
- Free. No advertising, nothing to buy inside it, no subscription.
- Where to get it
- Not on the public store yet. It is on Google Play's internal testing track while the last few defects get worked through, so there is no listing to send you to. Email dave@madcowsailing.com and I will add you as a tester.
- Phone version
- There is one, and it works, but it has not been published. It is the same timer rather than a companion — a sailor with no watch gets the whole thing.
Questions
- Do I need my phone on the boat?
- No. It is a standalone watch app. There is nothing to pair, and the app has no network access at all, so it does not care whether your phone is ashore.
- Does it keep counting with the screen off?
- Yes. Turning the screen off or switching away does not stop the countdown — the watch keeps it alive until the gun. It also drives the display to full brightness while a race is on screen, which is what makes it readable in sun.
- What happens on Do Not Disturb?
- The tones go silent — that is Do Not Disturb doing its job, and the watch tells you so during the race rather than leaving you to work it out. Every cue still reaches your wrist as vibration, the gun included.
- Can I use it running a race committee?
- Yes. The two race-manager sequences are voiced for someone sounding the signals rather than counting them, the clock keeps running as an elapsed-time race clock after the gun, and there is a two-stage lead-in so the watch and an external signal box start in step.
- Does it collect anything about me?
- No. It has no account, no analytics and no network permission. What it keeps is your start sequence and the clock reading for a race in flight, in the watch's own private storage. The privacy page lists every value.
Curious how it was built? There is a write-up of the engineering side at madcowhq.com.