An interview with Jay Leon about RTK GPS technology and his new role as CEO of Velocitek
by David Schmidt 24 Mar 08:00 PDT
March 24, 2026
Jay Leon is the CEO of Velocitek © Jay Leon Collection
Memories have a way of turning gold with passing decades, but I still clearly remember a starting-line clinic that my sailing instructors gave our group of Laser (sorry, "ILCA") sailors back in the early 1990s. I had (once again) put myself in a sub-optimal position, this time by the pin end, but, as luck would have it, my friends Brian and William, who were both on starboard, were uncharacteristically late. I'm not sure how I applied alchemy to my mistake, but I dip-started the line, on port, and smoked them both.
It was hands-down my best start that whole summer.
Brian, in particular, always nailed his starts (I'm sure he still does), and served as an early example of how some sailors are just a heck of a lot better at judging speed, time, and distance—while also juggling tactics—than others.
But given the importance of good starts, this was clearly a skill set that needed improving and polishing. I can remember thinking that it would be great if there was a tool that could help simplify the starting-line samba for those of us who lack that Jedi mind trick. Afterall, the big boats that I raced on had that kind of kit, so it wasn't preposterous to think that a trickle down could someday happen.
Flash forward to 2005, and Alec Stewart founded Velocitek, which began introducing innovative equipment, including the Prism precision compass, the Speedpuck GPS speedometer, and ProStart (2011), the latter of which calculates the real-time distance to the starting line for small boats.
Jump ahead again to 2025 and Velocitek released their game-changing RTK Puck, which calculates distance to the line, automatically determines if any boats are OCS, and notifies any over-early starters.
Unlike standard GPS devices that deliver accuracy to within a few meters, "RTK GPS", which is used in both the Americas Cup and SailGP, uses satellite position corrections that are constantly set to devices to shrink standard GPS's accuracy box down to a few centimeters.
Velocitek's published accuracy for the RTK Puck is 1.8 centimeters.
Better still, the RTK Puck system is part of a bigger wireless race management system that delivers automated starts. Here, RTK GPS devices are placed on the RC boat, the pin, and on each of the competing boats (e.g., an RTK Puck), and the system's software communicates the official starting-clock times and determines if any boats are OCS; it then directly communicates with any offenders.
The RTK Puck made its international-level debut at the New York Yacht Club's 2025 Invitational Cup, and it's also been used at the German Sailing League Championships and at different Olympic class test events.
On March 9, 2026, Velocitek named my friend Jay Leon, a longtime Seattle-based dinghy and big-boat sailor (and wing-foiling addict), as their new CEO. Given that I've known Leon for well over a decade and have had the good fortunate to race with him numerous times, I pinged him, via email, to learn more about his new role.
Congrats on your new job. How did this come about? Also, can you please tell us a bit about your business and sailing background, and how that fits into the picture?
Tom Hutton, Stan Honey and I have been on the board of Velocitek since 2024, and when Velocitek's founder Alec Stewart decided to step away from day-to-day operations at the end of 2025, I offered to serve as CEO and carry on the many great traditions he brought us over the past 20 years.
I have started and run small companies, raised money, built teams, done deals, mostly in B2B technology, so this is my first project in the marine business.
I have been a Corinthian inshore one design sailor since childhood starting in Penguins, then Lasers, Aeros, Tasars, J/24s, 505s, J/70s, and J/105s. I also helped organize the 2024 J/24 Worlds in Seattle, which was the first world championship to use Vakaros' (our competitor) automated starting technology. I am not an engineer, so I rely heavily on our very talented engineers and advisors for technical guidance.
I know I just referred to Vakaros as our competitor, and everyone in the market naturally thinks of our Velocitek ProStart and RTK Puck as competing with Vakaros' products. But the market is just beginning to absorb these new tools, and I prefer to think of us as partners working together to help the sport advance.
I realize that these are early days, but what do you see as your biggest challenges in your new role?
Building our devices fast enough is absolutely our biggest challenge. Our community is made up of a few dozen small and specialized companies that are run by very talented and passionate founders offering registration and scoring services, tracking applications, robot marks, GPS-enabled telemetry devices (like ours), and many others.
Velocitek and these companies are building devices as fast as possible because the market has accepted the new technologies faster than any of us expected.
The makers of the components and software we use are also giving us new capabilities at an accelerating pace. So, everyone is working very hard to keep up.
A year from now, what would success in your new position look like to you? What about in three years's time?
We want to work to calm the swarm, make things easier for everyone, and help grow our sport. So, we are building relationships with the other regatta technology makers to give race organizers and sailors a better experience.
We envision a day soon when a race organizer can pick the services they want from a menu by clicking checkboxes, and then sign one simple agreement. It all works. Similarly, a sailor can add an event to their profile with a click of a button.
A bit down the road, we imagine bringing this type of simplicity to people that want to follow the action from a distance. There are amazing stories playing out at regattas every week, and following from a distance is much harder than it should be.
There have been some recent grumblings in some sailing media that technologies like Velocitek add cost and complication to a sport that is already struggling with participation numbers. Your thoughts?
Our sport has always had to manage technological advances. We are addressing this problem by renting our devices by the event. There is no question that race organizers are having to learn multiple new systems, many of which overlap in functionality, and sailors are being asked to pay good money for devices that may seem like just fancy ideas.
But after sailing at an event with no general recalls, absolutely fair starts, and well executed shoreside activities, no one wants to go back to black flags.
With no need to ping the ends, no need to set your watch, it really is a great experience.
Let's spin that last question around. I've also heard several of my friends who sail at a high level say that tools and technologies like Velocitek are playing-field "levelers" that are more beneficial to sailors who aren't professionals/world champions. Your thoughts?
It is true that all change is not progress. And everyone responds differently to change. If we have our way, the "skill" of a sailor forcing a general recall when the start is not looking good for them will be obsolete.
There are many levers to pull when trying to manage change. Some classes do not allow certain instruments, some do not allow new sail materials, some require owners to drive.
In contrast to those resisting changes, we have been criticized for being too slow and deliberate as we have developed our devices and system. We recognize that there is a big step being taken, and [we] want to be responsible stewards of our sport as we move forward. We are committed to bringing everyone along and making our sport better.
In college, I had a part-time summer job running the RC boat at a Connecticut yacht club, and I used to live in fear of accidentally calling a boat OCS (or missing one that was), and the resulting time "in the room" that an accidentally poor call would entail. How does this technology change the game for race committees and PROs?
We have developed our system in collaboration with extremely seasoned, former Olympic Games PROs [who] first needed to be convinced of the merit of our idea, and then the capabilities of the technology. We started with the machine looking over the shoulder of the PROs, and two summers later, with the PROs looking over the shoulder of the machine.
Over hundreds of starts, the sentiment went from "the machine will never match my eye", to "I could never do what that machine does".
A "jailbreak" start, when over half of the boats are OCS, is always a general recall when called by even the best PRO, but the machine has no problem handling it. And it has been our experience that regattas using our technology successfully deliver at least one additional race per day of an event.
It is no wonder that people are adopting this new technology faster than we anticipated, it makes the best use of everyone's time.
What kinds of classes/fleets tends to benefit the most from working with technologies like Velocitek? Are we talking about 100+ boat one-design events, or are we also talking about club-level regattas and casual keel-boat races?
The bulk of our experience is with extremely high-stakes events of 20 or so boats like the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup. At these elite events, every effort is made to ensure both the fairness of the competition, and a world-class experience for the competitors. The events are meticulously planned by hundreds of sailors and volunteers. There can be weather, there can be boat-wrecking collisions, and through it all, these race organizers are dedicated to producing spectacular events.
Anyone who has had the heart-wrenching experience of sailing an entire race and not getting a gun at the finish appreciates knowing the very second they are over the line. Anyone who has been in second place on the last day of a regatta and only getting to sail one race instead of the three planned because of general recalls appreciates races that start without delays. And the parties are much better because when the races start on time, the parties start on time.
We see many other benefits on the horizon. From a dozen ILCAs frostbite sailing without a single person on the race committee, to 100+ [boat] fleets clicking off starts without any issues, systems like ours will also make new things possible.
I know that you're really into wing foiling...in time, could you see Velocitek developing some kind of wearable technology that could be useful for wingers (or even for dinghy sailors)?
One of the reasons we are in discussions with World Sailing about the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics is to address the reality that iQFOILs and Kites cross the line at 25 knots. No human can judge those starts fairly.
Since our devices are fixed to the boat/board and "know" where the bow is, they can judge the starting line of very small vessels. In those applications sailors will interact with our devices through a watch.
We have already tested [the RTK Puck] on 49ers, 470s, and ILCAs. Boards are next.
Is there anything else about your new role, or about Velocitek or RTK GPS technology that you'd like to add for the record?
It is easy to get the competitive spirit charged up. We are working alongside many small companies in a small market with one unified aim: We want to make sailboat racing more accessible, fairer, and more fun.
The combined engineering talent in these little companies is impressive. By working together, we can bring about great improvements. The drama of the competition between the companies can make for an entertaining story but [it] distracts from how these new technologies are solving real problems on the water and giving us all a better experience.