Satellite tracking breaks the Silence

by Rob Kothe on 19 Aug 2005 Once upon a time, sailors crossed the startline and disappeared over the horizon and the next their families heard of them was when they received a phone call after the finish. Just as sailors are now receiving most of their news online, now we expect to see races the same way.

Sailors are now used to being able to follow races via Internet access to ‘real time’ positions in the Volvo Ocean Race, the Vendee Globe, the America’s Cup and in Australia the CYCA is leading the way, with their three big races, the Rolex Sydney – Hobart, the Sydney to Mooloolaba race and the Sydney to Gold Coast race.

The 2,225 nautical mile Transpac Race preserves links with transpacific sailing fleets of last century, with daily sextant plots being required from each navigator. Fleet positions are transmitted by radio schedule once each day.

However, the smallest boat in the fleet, Australia’s The Cone of Silence broke the silence. With the official permission of Transpac race organisers, the little Aussie battler was transmitting its position from its Argos unit every 30 minutes,

The Cone’s data was received by Sail-World, the largest sailing news site in the world and displayed at http://www.sail-world.com/yachttracker.cfm?seid=71

James Neill and his crew were keen to share their experience with his family and friends and he and Sail-World both spent time and effort to make sure The Cone would not be silent.

Here is what he had to say about it:

‘It cost me about $1000 to rent and track using Argos. For me, it was value for money. Firstly, because it was a back up EPIRB with an ‘emergency switch’ that attached to the pushpit on a quick release. And secondly, because my family and my crew’s families and our friends became part of the race ‘experience’.

‘I suspect that sailors don’t appreciate the value that others who are not actually on board get whilst following on the internet and feeling like they are part of the race – from my 6 year old watching our progress and saying ‘there’s daddy’ to my mates saying ‘Why the hell are they going over there?’ the feedback has been positive.

The only negative comment came from my wife who said ‘It would have been much better if all the boats had them like they do in Australian races – then we could have had updates on how you were doing relative to other boats more than once a day.’

(Transpac publishes positions from its sked once per day)

‘I hear people say that they think tracking diminishes the ability to use strategy in long races because everyone knows where everyone is, all the time. I don’t think that’s true. If a big boat wants to track its opposition, they use radar anyway.

‘For the rest of us, it only makes the racing more exciting – strategy is more interesting as you take account of the opposition and what you think is the fastest way to the finish and trimmers and drivers have something to measure themselves by.’

We agree with James.

As more and more events go online the pressure is on events to provide similar facilities. The Fastnet race team, recognising they are behind the times explained the cost was prohibitive for such a large fleet. That is understandable but radio skeds are not exactly new tech and they are not expensive.

The Melbourne to Osaka race in 2003 had the Argos tracking units, Sail-World provided the tracking/reporting from that event and the satellite data was a key to the success of that event coverage.

For the 2007 Osaka race, the online traffic will again be huge and it is not just big boat racing. Olympic course round the mark automatic recording is already successful and racing is online and as chips get cheaper, you can expect the dinghy world to be bar-coded.

Mainstream coverage of sailing is unlikely to grow. However the numbers of sailors following their sport online continues to explode so maybe it will not matter in the end.

The online audience is booming, Sail-World’s own audience, fuelled by its strong coverage of long races and regatta’s has doubled this year and it is likely to do the same next year.

Now we are seeing wi-fi hot spots in marinas, the Marinanet installation at Hamilton Island switched on this week, but its long range internet that will make the real difference, the wi-max chip, with a range of 50-70km, combined with 1.8 meg broadband speed is going to revolutionise race management and race coverage and naturally race reporting.