Yacht Tracker for Mooloolaba Race website

by Lisa Ratcliff on 8 Apr 2003 The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's Yacht Tracker satellite tracking system will provide real time positions of the fleet on a new dedicated website for the 2003 FKP Limited Sydney to Mooloolaba Yacht Race, which starts from Sydney Harbour tomorrow, 9 April.

The CYCA has established the new website - www.cyca.com.au/mooloolaba
- following the successful use of the innovative Yacht Tracker satellite system on the official website for the 2002 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. It will go live tomorrow.

Yacht Tracker will provide real time positions of each yacht throughout the race, updating every 10 minutes.

The first standings should be on the website two or three hours after the start at 1pm tomorrow, the first time that the Sydney to Mooloolaba Race
has had an official website and yachting tracking system. The CYCA is planning a special site for its other race to Queensland waters, the Sydney to Gold Coast Race in late July this year.

The CYCA has equipped each boat in the 43-boat Sydney to Mooloolaba Race fleet with an Inmarsat D+ transmitter which automatically updates the
yacht's latitude and longitude and transmits it via satellite to an earth station.

>From there, the data is transmitted to the website, showing in text and graphics each yacht's position in the fleet, its place relative to other boats, and the speed currently being achieved, as well as the direction the
boat is sailing.

Website viewers will be able to look at the overall state of the fleet or zoom into a group of boats, as well as accessing the current status of an individual boat.

In addition to the constant real time position reports via Yacht Tracker, positions received from the fleet will be immediately converted by a highly sophisticated spreadsheet into a report on the website that shows each yacht's position in the fleet, distance to the finish line, as well as its progressive corrected time position under the IMS, IRC and PHS handicap categories.

Thus, once every 10 minutes viewers will be able to determine the handicap and line honours position of every boat in the fleet.

The web will include continuous news releases, a full list of competing yachts, background features, photographs, as well as weather forecasts and, as the yachts finish, their finishing times and provisional overall and
division handicap positions.

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