Festival of Sails: The action and excitement on the water – enjoyed from the shore

Rating fleet on Corio Bay during the 2015 Festival of Sails © Teri Dodds

The Regatta Village will again feature a big screen for shore-based spectators to enjoy during Geelong's Festival of Sails.

While still on shore, but staying warm and dry, you'll see and feel the excitement of the sailing.

SailRacer which uses GPS tracking for following and analysing sailing events will produce a real time leaderboard, automatically updated to display the latest positions.

The technology used by SailRacer is Tack Tracker - developed by a Melbourne-based business and now used all over the world. Tack Tracker is a small battery powered unit attached to a boat or a sailor. Using GPS the trackers record each boat's position every five seconds and upload the data to a cloud server over a mobile phone network.

According to Greg Seers from Tack Tracker, the system gives shore-bound spectators a birds-eye view of the race. Sailors can watch a race in replay and get the analysis that shows them how a race was won or lost.

If that's not enough for spectators, the big screen will also feature daily videos incorporating all the action both on and off the water – with close boat footage and interviews.

VR Sport Media is supporting the 175th Festival of Sails as the official videographer. The VRsport.tv media crew will be onsite and in addition to daily videos on the big screen, will be providing social media and photographs.

Simon Butterworth from VR Sports Media says video on demand will be available through the VRsport.tv Video on Demand (VOD) channel and linked through the VRsport.tv social media sites including Facebook with viewers across the globe able to watch all the action.

If visitors want to have a go at sailing – and stay dry, then virtual reality will be an option. VR Regatta, the world's leading virtual reality sailing game will be available to play in the Regatta Village precinct, and it is a surprisingly real way for players to share the way sailing can enjoy a sailing experience but without a boat!

VR Regatta has been developed by MarineVerse, an international team of creative designers and advocates for sailing, who are bringing together sailing with emergent technology.

"Our mission is to inspire, train and connect sailors, and share the feeling of this amazing sport with a wide global audience," said Greg Dziemidowicz, CEO and Lead Developer at MarineVerse.

"We want more people to sail, so we are doing it by providing sailing education and entertainment using Virtual Reality technology."

It will be a great opportunity for anyone playing the game to 'virtually' journey through the sunrise and sunset, competing in challenges and races, or just enjoying a peaceful moonlit sail.