Pineapple Cup to use Horizon Marine Tracking for race

by Dana Paxton on 4 Feb 2009 The SORC announced today an agreement with Horizon Marine to track all of the competitors in this year's Pineapple Cup – the Fort Lauderdale to Montego Bay, Jamaica Race.

Using its proprietary iBoat Track software, hourly GPS signals will track all competing boats and display real-time positions on Horizon’s online graphic display, providing position, speed, fleet and class positions during the entire length of the course. The race starts this Friday, February 6th at 1400 off Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, and the live reports will be available at that time on www.montegobayrace.com.

'This is the first time tracking will be used for the Pineapple Cup for the benefit of all those e-spectators, families and friends who want to follow the race daily,' said Ken Batzer, Race Chairman. 'Each boat will have an iBoat Track GPS transponder mounted on the deck, and course positions will be updated every hour.'

The 810-mile race offers navigators, tacticians, and crews a challenging all-points-of-sail blast to a fabled destination. Immediately after the start the racers cross the Gulf Stream for the Northwest Providence Channel. The middle of the race usually offers a fetch down the eastern side of the Bahamas Island Chain towards the tip of Cuba. The final stretch is a sailor’s dream: a 240 mile downwind sleigh ride from Cuba’s eastern tip known as Windward Passage to the finish at Montego Bay. Typical 20-plus knot aft trade winds and rolling, following seas push the racers downhill into the sunset toward the finish, where they’re greeted right at the finish line with the traditional case of Jamaica’s finest Red Stripe beer.

The race is sponsored by the Lauderdale Yacht Club (Fort Lauderdale, FL), the Montego Bay Yacht Club (Montego Bay, Jamaica), and the Jamaican Yachting Association (Kingston, Jamaica), the Storm Trysail Club (Larchmont, N.Y.), and administered by the SORC Race Management team.

The Pineapple Cup has long been an ocean racing classic. The race started in 1961 and has run either annually or biannually ever since. Past winners are a Who’s Who of ocean skippers and yacht names. Ted Turner won three times in Vamoose (’67), Lightnin (’73) and Tenacious (’79); the Johnson family won in Ticonderoga (’65); John Kilroy won twice in Kialoa (’75 & ’77); and Jack King won in Merrythought (’91). The current race record is held by Titan 12, set in 2005, with an impressive elapsed time of 2 days, 10 hours, 24 minutes and 42 seconds.

Go to www.montegobayrace.com for a link to the race tracking.

About SORC The SORC mission is to lead the expansion of offshore competitive sailing in South Florida by providing the highest level of race organization, management and promotions for those that enjoy the sport of ocean sailing. The SORC is a Florida non-profit organization driven by a select group of volunteers that bring professional event management, sailing, racing and other skills to the organization. To automatically be placed on future email announcements for this and other SORC events go to www.sorcsailing.org.

About Storm Trysail Club Reflecting in its name the sail to which sailors must shorten when facing adverse conditions, the Storm Trysail Club is one of the world’s most respected sailing clubs, with its membership comprised strictly of skilled blue water and ocean racing sailors. www.stormtrysail.org.

About Horizon Marine iBoattrack is a web service that offers tracking and mapping of offshore yacht races, cruising boats, and fleets of offshore commercial assets. The proprietary service utilizes GPS tracking units to acquire raw data positioning of each vessel on an hourly or bi-hourly basis. iBoattrack’s Race Tracking system not only offers end-users the comfort of watching a race from their home or office PCs, but gives them a different perspective on the race in general. For each race, iBoattrack offers a Google Map-based interactive map, a low bandwidth map, both with weather overlays, an unofficial 'progress board', a photo page of each vessel labeled 'fleet view', a discussion board, and a help page offering aid to the end-user who wants to learn how to navigate through the site.

Since 2001, iBoattrack has successfully tracked and mapped 27 sailboat races.