Extract text from BLW files
To convert your BLW file to another format, you need Sailwave or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Scoring & GIS Georeferencing" file type, you need software like Sailwave or a similar tool.
The .blw extension primarily serves two distinct communities: competitive sailing and geospatial analysis.
First, it is the native format for Sailwave, the standard software for scoring sailing regattas. These files store the entire database of a competition - competitors, boat classes, handicap ratings, and race results. The main friction point here is accessibility: .blw files are proprietary and can only be opened natively by Sailwave, which is a Windows-centric desktop application. If you need to share results with competitors or publish them to a club website, distributing the raw .blw file is useless. You typically need to convert these into HTML, PDF, or XLS (Excel) formats to make the data readable.
Second, in the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) world, a .blw file is a 'World File' used to georeference a BIL (Band Interleaved by Line) raster image. It is a tiny, plain text file containing six lines of coordinate data that tell software like ArcGIS Pro or Surfer exactly where to place the image on a map. The problem with World Files is that they are easily separated from their parent image. If you send someone a BIL file without the accompanying .blw, the map data is spatially meaningless. For archiving or transfer, it is far better to convert the BIL and .blw combination into a single, self-contained TIF (GeoTIFF) or JP2 (JPEG 2000) file.
Convert.Guru analyzes your BLW file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted F2, HED and PRP files.
If you want to convert BLW file to INI, CFG, CONF, CONFIG, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, ENV, PROPERTIES or RC, you can use Sailwave or similar software from the "Sailing Race Scoring Data" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert ZSHRC, CONF, RCFILE, GITCONFIG, RC, PLIST, BASHRC, CONFIG, PROFILE, INI, PREFS or CFG files to BLW, try Sailwave or another comparable tool in the "Sailing Race Scoring Data" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our BLW converter.