Races, Regattas and Disruptive Technology

by Rob Kothe, YachtsandYachting.com & Sail-World.com on 19 Apr 2016 In the olden days, the major cost of attending a regatta for yacht owners and crew was the accommodation and still is.

Of course for cruising yachties, traditionally the crew stays on the boat, during regatta week, because after all it is replete with dishwasher and washing machine and a good cellar and an oven in which you could cook a roast

For racing boat owners or dinghy owners, life was not so easy.

Typically, I recall in the mid-1990s, having 10 crew staying in two hotel rooms sleeping multiples in beds.

There were pillows down the center of the double bed and each crew was threatened with death if he cuddled his bedmate, sailors on the floor in sleeping bags, on sofas, on camping stretchers on balconies, everywhere.

That's one of the ways you kept the cost down. And the hi-jinks that occurred were the stuff of legends.

I recall one year I had a crew of 10; five girls, five guys. So I put them in hotel room next to each other on the 10th floor.

The guys, as part of the hoped for mating ritual I have to say, decided that they would get the attention of the girls in the crew by putting pot plants on their 10th floor balcony each night, so that the girls would wake up in the morning and there was another potted plant part of a growing forest on the balcony.

The guys were grabbing them from around the hotel floors, unbeknownst to the skipper who was tucked up well in bed before this happened.

But how were they getting on the girl’s balcony? Very simple. Just like Tom Cruise they climbed up onto the ledge between the two apartments, overlooking the concrete surrounding the pool, and riskily stepped around with heavy potted plant in hands. I shudder even thinking about, as I recount the tale.

On the morning of the regatta lay day, I woke up from slumber around 4am as three of the crew burst in, each carrying large pot plants.

The pot plants were in better condition than the sailors, by a long shot, the guys were three sheets.

Out they went to the balcony and I had visions of telling their mothers why they plunged to their death from the 10th floor.

The ring leader was my bowman, now a respected senior media executive, so to avoid embarrassment I will call him XXXXX.

I said, “XXXXX, don't even think about it” and XXXXX stopped in his tracks. I said, “I'm a light sleeper and I'm awake. Leave your pot plants right there” and they retired to bed.

About 15 minutes later, XXXXX crept from his bed, stepped towards the balcony and I said, “XXXXX, enough. You're not doing it now”.

Later that day I threatened to move us to another apartment further along the corridor so that there would be no opportunity for the boys to impress the girls by their daring do.

And then there is the legendary story of the golf cart which found its way to a hotel suite via the lifts at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, a feat which required the combined effort of sailors and coaches from one un-named country.

Much race and regatta accommodation has now moved from the high rise hotels, as the internet has delivered a thing called AirBnB, there are a whole lot of other ones like Housetrip that are clones of that.

The benefits are that in cities around the world that people with apartments, large and small, eclectic and ordinary, can move out during races and regattas or stay with their parents or go on a holiday and rent out their apartments or houses, whatever.

The downside is that hotels are less likely to be race or regatta sponsors, but it spreads the economic benefits across the whole community rather than just to the hotel owners, but it certainly reduces cost.

One of the benefits of the social media aspects of this home accommodation, is the reference system. The hosts have to provide verified photos of the accommodation, and they leave reviews on the guests, and the guests leave reviews on them.

This is not something that happens in the hotel industry, where bad guests continue to be bad guests and have no need to moderate their behavior, just taking their white towels and the fluffy dressing gowns, and occasionally the television as well.

In the home rental market, your reputation will find you the best accommodation or not, it really matters. So consequently, you get hosts trying to be good hosts, you get guests trying to be very good guests, and everybody wins a prize.

And the payoff is huge, for the upcoming Rio Regatta, the Rio Olympics, private accommodation costs are around a fifth to an eighth of the going hotel rates with accommodation options that is completely just not going to happen in the hotel industry.

For Rio, the Sail World media team will have a multi-bedroom air conditioned apartment with kitchen, washer, drier and 30-megabyte download speeds and five-megabyte upload speeds, unlimited internet for about half the cost of a single bed hotel room.

As always, the early bird gets the worm, so as part of the regatta planning or race planning these days, you need a member of your team who has got the time or the interest in securing the best possible accommodation deal for your team.

This could make a big difference to the cost for everybody, and that means more regatta participation and less times that the boat owner has to buy a complete kitchen renovation right now for the stay-at-home wife as the pay-off she's discovered he has ordered two new head sails and a spinnaker and is paying for his crew accommodation.

Housetrip, AirBnB, Flipkey, Tripping, Homestay, VRBO, BookingTeam, the list goes on, there's a dozen of them worth looking at.

A good deal for everybody. (except the hotels) But that means more regattas and races for every sailor.