I had the pleasure of testing the Coxmate SCT in the last Four’s Head and I was really impressed with it!
After unpacking the unit, everything was easy: installing the magnetic mounting plate and the GPS sensor , attaching the Coxmate to the existing speaker harness of the boat and starting to use it (even without having read the instructions!) did not prove too difficult a task.
I particularly appreciated the magnetic mounting system: once the mounting plate is fixed in a suitable position on the boat and all the cables are connected, all that is left to do is just drop the main unit onto the magnetic mounting base. No cables need to be connected each time! Once mounted, the Coxmate is very easy to use: the Menu that allows you to access all the functionalities and settings of the unit is very intuitive and very simple. So it is just a matter of few minutes to have the Coxmate up and running.
But it is on the water when the real advantages of the Coxmate become evident: the amount of information that is available is unbelievable when compared to the data provided by ‘normal’ cox-boxes. Apart from the rating, the elapsed time and the stroke count, the Coxmate supplies the cox with very useful data such as the travelled distance, the speed, the cover and the average speed (other Coxmate models give the possibility to check the speed ratio too).
During the race, it was especially helpful to know the speed and the cover, two aspects that I would only be able to estimate using my experience. And this is probably one of the main advantages of the Coxmate as it gives objective data which can easily be interpreted by anyone and particularly by a novice cox. I was able to give more detailed feedback to my crew in terms of how much distance was left, the splits they were doing and the distance covered per stroke. For the first time they had a direct measure of their efforts and they could visualize their work in the water better than they did before.
In my opinion the only weakness of the Coxmate is its mounting base as it uses a specific mounting base; once this has been mounted in a boat then the Coxmate can be used only in that boat. In other words, it would be good if it was possible to not permanently fix the base to the boat but, for example, to somehow fit it in the existing cox-box holder.
In conclusion I would definitely recommend the use of the Coxmate to everybody: from the experienced cox to the very novice one, anybody can take advantage of the extensive data that it provides. As soon as I talked to my coach about it she wanted to know how much it costs! She was mostly interested in the possibility of analysing the data off the water with a computer.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and Grant (I hope this was his name) for the opportunity given to me and my club. it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you and test the Coxmate!
Diego Colantoni, City of Bristol Rowing Club
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