There is no substitute for actually being aboard a great ocean racer as their crews cope with the best and worst Mother Nature has to offer. But the clever application of some the newest web technology is making it easier for those of us sailing from armchairs to follow along – often in real time.
Many of the big races – America's Cup, Newport-Bermuda, and the Volvo Ocean Race, just to name a few – now have an online presence that can give you almost everything but the salt spray itself. Even some of the smaller coastal ocean contests, the ones that include amateur crews of family and friends, are going high-tech, with tracking systems that let us all follow along.
It is hard to put into such a few words the full essence of this race, the boats, the amount of water we saw flying down the deck, the stress of watching hundreds of miles of lead disappear, the cold, the wet, the best and the worst sailing of my life, the moments of despair and the euphoria at winning. This is a unique race which attracts the highest level of sporting contest.
Mike Sanderson, Skipper – ABN AMRO ONE
Winner, 2006 Volvo Ocean Race
Ironically, as recreational sailing contracts – boat sales fell by half since 2000 – serious, often extreme ocean racing – is exploding, with major races going on nearly all the time. Perhaps it's no surprise that the presence of the big sail races on the web has mirrored the growth of the web itself. The Whitbread round-the-world race in 1997-1998 (which was re-named for its sponsor Volvo in 2001) was one of the first to have a major online presence. Positions, news items, emails from the boats and stacks of background information were all posted on a website, guaranteeing a massive new audience who could follow the race as it happened in real time.
Today, the easy availability of GPS technology and the explosion of ever-more-capable marine electronics have insured that online interest in the sport continues to grow.
With the advent of small, relatively inexpensive GPS receivers, and greater access to low-orbiting satellites, companies developed tracking systems that were first used on trucking fleets, and then for maritime applications. One of those companies is Horizon Marine, which used a simple tracking buoy to help scientists and oil companies study currents in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. Realizing the technology could be used to track fleets of racing sailboats – and with the experience in-hand to create devices for the harsh, saltwater environment – Horizon established a division of its company called iBoattrack.
George Owen is the manager if iBoattrack, which now supplies tracking systems to many race organizers. According to Owen, iBoattrack uses a small, notebook-sized device that is mounted on the upper deck of a sailboat. The devices have their own Lithium batteries, which will power the devices for about 30 days, long enough for most racers to return to their home ports. "We've done some really big races, like the Chicago-Mackinac race this summer, which had more than 430 entries," Owen says.
VOLVO OCEAN RACEOcean Racing with a Canting KeeliBoattrack maintains a website that collects and processes the boats' raw position data and then displays it in a sophisticated, interactive format. Viewers can select which boats to follow and view time-lapse tracks forward and back to see how the fleet disperses after the start. There is often the ability to overlay important environmental factors, such as sea-surface temperatures and surface winds. This can reveal the probable strategy of the skippers as they change course to take advantage of wind and currents along their routes.
DATA DELAYS
Talbot Wilson, who provides public relations support for several major sail races each year, says online race tracking has become "essential" to the their overall success. However, he also notes that intentional delays in posting data have become a requirement of several race organizers, who "apparently feel it could be used by some of the racers themselves to gain some kind of tactical advantage."
Wilson disagrees that there is a danger, noting that a captain who learns that another skipper seems to have better conditions 20 miles to the east "isn't going to go three hours out of his way just to find out the conditions and the competitor have moved on."
The organizers of the Newport-Bermuda race, one of the best-known races in the world, this year insisted on a four-hour delay for online tracking. iBoattrack's Owen says one or two others have asked for delays of "perhaps an hour or so," but that most organizers don't think there's an issue.
Owen points out that the system may be most useful to a race captain after the race, when "they can go back into the archive, which we keep online, and replay their own track, isolating it from the rest of the fleet to see where they might have made different decisions."
VOLVO OCEAN RACEOpen 70 Racer Il Mostro Leaves Newport for Spain to prepare for 2008 Volvo Ocean Race.
Those of us second-guessing the skippers can do the same thing, which can make for a much richer experience and lead to a better understanding of the thinking behind racing strategies. What follows are a primer on some of the largest races, along with information on how they can be watched online.
Of course, there are thousands of sailing races around the globe, ranging from the America's Cup to the beer can races at the local yacht club, and any list of the top contests is bound to become a target of debate. But a certain few regularly pit man and boat against nature in a way that, most sailors would agree, is worth watching.
THE VOLVO OCEAN RACE
http://www.volvooceanrace.org/
This may be the mother of all races. It has its roots in the former Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, which began in 1973 with a fleet of 17 yachts and was organized by the Royal Naval Sailing Association with sponsorship from its namesake London-based brewery. The Whitbread was the first-ever attempt at a global, crewed yacht race and was held every four years, departing from Portsmouth, England.
After the 1997-98 race, Volvo, then a major sponsor, took over total ownership and management of the Whitbread and the race was renamed the Volvo Ocean Race, debuting under that name in 2001-2002.
The Volvo Ocean Race will be run again this year, only two years after the last race – another example of the growing segment of high-end, open-class ocean racing. This year, the race will launch from Alicante, the port in southern Spain, on October 11, after a week of in-port racing. The legs of the race take the sailors to Cape Town, Cochin (India), Singapore, Qingdao, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg, Stockholm and finally St. Petersburg.
The Volvo race has also contributed perhaps the ultimate in monohull sailboat design to the racing world – The Volvo Open 70. These boats represent the pinnacle of monohull, ocean-going design and are the fastest monohull sailboats in the world. The boats employ the latest in design, materials and technology, including innovations like the canting keel and exotic composite materials. Since their first appearance in the 2005-2006 race, the Volvo Open 70s have evolved to include design elements that improve durability, safety and ease of operation.
THE FASTNET
The Fastnet, named after the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland that marks the midpoint of the race, was first sailed in 1925, and has run biennially since the 1930s. It is a 608-mile race from the Isle of Wight, around Fastnet Rock, and back to Plymouth, England. It is a difficult race, testing both inshore and offshore skills across a stretch of ocean considered to be among the most treacherous in the world.
The race has been sponsored by Rolex since 2001, and is officially known now as the Rolex Fastnet Race. It is organized by the Royal Ocean Racing Club in association with the Royal Western Yacht Club and the Royal Yacht Squadron. More than 300 boats and 2,500 crewmembers participated in the 2007 competition.
SYDNEY HOBART
The annual Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race has been run for the last 63 years and vies with the America's Cup and the Volvo Ocean Race for popularity and media coverage. Australians consider it to be one of the major summer sporting events in their country. The 638-mile race is run between Christmas and New Year's, running from Sydney to Hobart, the capital of the Tasmanian state. Like the Fastnet, the racers can experience some of the worst ocean weather in the world, even though the race is held relatively close to shore.
The Sydney Hobart is open to all racers who can satisfy the safety requirements for boat and crew, and includes many amateurs in addition to well-heeled entrepreneurs running boats that sport the latest in maritime technology. The fleet has, at times, included 30-foot wooden sloops and 30-meter maxis – even some of the Volvo Open 70s.
VOLVO OCEAN RACEPuma's Il Mostro Demonstrates Required Stability.TRANSPAC
http://www.transpacificyc.org/
The Transpac is most well-known for its biennial Los Angeles-to-Honolulu race, although for several years, the race's sponsor, the Transpacific Yacht Club, has run a race to Tahiti in the alternate years.
This year's race to Tahiti established a new time record as Doug Baker's 4-year-old Magnitude 80 speedster ripped about 3 1/2 days off Kathmandu's 1994 elapsed time record. Magnitude 80's time was 11 days, 10 hours, 13 minutes and 18 seconds, and its average speed was 13 knots.
The most recent LA-Honolulu run, in 2007, was the 44th race to Hawaii and included 73 boats. According to the Transpacifoc Yacht Club, the competition had the youngest crew ever (aboard Edge of Destiny, where the average age was 19.8 years), and the oldest crew of two (aboard Tango, each 70-years-old), and the oldest boat (Alsumar at 73 years).
One of the most famous regulars in the Transpac is Roy E. Disney's Pyewacket, which is now actually owned by the Orange Coast College School of Sailing and Seamanship. Disney chartered it back from the school and his crew posted the fastest elapsed time by a monohull (7 days, 1 hour, 11 minutes and 56 seconds). The last boat to finish was Mysteré, a Swan 42, which got a six-day headstart on Pyewacket but finished seven days later.
The Transpac includes an "Aloha Class" for pure cruising boats and many families and dedicated amateurs sail in the race. There was also a team of young sailors recruited and trained for the race while a film production crew recorded their every move and sound to make a documentary about it. "Morning Light" is scheduled to be in theaters October 17.
VOLVO OCEAN RACEThe Volvo Ocean Race can be a Tough Ride.NEWPORT-BERMUDA
The biennial Newport-Bermuda Race is one of the best-known races in the sailing world, perhaps because of Newport's status as the East Coast's ocean sailing capital. Or maybe it is that the race attracts both amateurs and seasoned professionals equally, the former testing their skills in a serious, open-ocean race and the latter testing new boats and tuning up crews for the big global races. The 2008 race had 194 boats, the most since the centennial running in 2006, which had 286 entries.
The Cruising Club of America and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club are the co-organizers of the race, which was founded in 1906 as the first ocean race for "amateur sailors in normal boats." The race takes its participants across 635 miles of open ocean and crosses a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean known for challenging weather, especially in the Gulf Stream, where strong currents must be negotiated with skill to achieve the best tactical advantage. The fleet has five divisions to allow boats and sailors of many sizes and skill levels to participate. Typically, 90 percent of the boats have amateur crews comprised of friends and family members.
The Newport-Bermuda Race is part of a larger race series known as the Onion Patch. The Onion Patch starts out with the high-level competition of the New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta, with a focus on fast-paced round-the-buoys sailing. The Series then moves on to the historic ocean racing of the Newport Bermuda Race, complete with the challenges of the Gulf Stream and the joys of "Happy Valley" in the approach to Bermuda. Finally, as a fitting reward, the Onion Patch concludes with racing in sub-tropical conditions on Great Sound off Hamilton, Bermuda, with the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club's Anniversary Regatta.
To become an Onion Patch winner, the yacht and her crew must demonstrate a broad range of skills, and do consistently well through a variety of conditions and challenges. Ultimately, the Onion Patch rewards strong, capable all-around performance, a true demonstration of a yacht's depth of performance, a crew's seamanship, and of superiority in boat handling.