Sponsoring a Racing Mark – Worth a (Vodka) Shot.

Here’s a sailing sponsorship story with a bit of a difference. If you want to get your message out to the yacht racing community, sponsoring a boat is not the only way. Occasionally the opportunity to name a racing mark in the Solent comes up giving companies the ability to be programmed into GPS devices of pro-sailors as well as being talked about by sailors racing towards and around the ‘cans’.

Wight Vodka has snapped up one of the central Solent racing marks in a long-term agreement with Cowes Week Ltd.

The Wight Vodka racing buoy is located at 50° 48.63′N, 01° 16.66′W and will be used throughout the coming years’ regatta seasons in potentially hundreds of races.

Ritu Manocha, Director at 50° North, the creators of Wight Vodka, anticipates that the buoy to be in constant use.

“We always had our eyes on sponsoring one of the premium racing marks in the Solent. We wanted a mark that is used by the yacht and sailing clubs both on the Isle of Wight and the south coast. When 50° 48.63′N, 01° 16.66′W opened up, we knew immediately that it was perfect for the Wight Vodka brand.”

Stuart Quarrie, Chief Executive of Cowes Week Ltd and the Cowes Combined Clubs, is pleased to have the support of 50° North.

“Cowes Week Ltd believes in building strong relationships with our partners, harbour and racing authorities and of course the yachtsmen and women who enjoy the Solent waters. Having the Wight Vodka racing mark firmly established for future years shows great long-term commitment.”

Manocha continued

“Now that we have the mark, we can definitely have some fun with it. For example, I can see yacht clubs creating a ‘First to the WV Mark’ contest with the more prestigious races, whereby the skipper who rounds WV ahead of the rest may get special recognition. A signed bottle of Wight perhaps?”

Wight Vodka’s spirit and enthusiasm for the ocean, coupled with the centuries old regatta traditions of the Isle of Wight.

E-Spectators to Follow Pineapple Race via iBoat Track

The rise of the yachting e-spectator continues with SORC, the organisers of the Pineapple Cup announcing an agreement with Horizon Marine to track all of the competitors in this year’s race from Fort Lauderdale to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

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.

Ken Batzer, Race Chairman.

“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,”

“Each boat will have an iBoat Track GPS transponder mounted on the deck, and course positions will be updated every hour.”

Horizon Marine iBoattrack is a web service that offers tracking and mapping of offshore yacht races, cruising boats, and fleets of offshore commercial assets.  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.

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.

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).

Fore more information go to www.montegobayrace.com

Follow the Monsoon Cup with Virtual Eye

The finale of the World Match Racing Tour, the Monsoon Cup, gets underway in Malaysia on the 3rd of December. Apart from deciding the championship, this event uses some of the latest technology to get the message around the world.

Apart from the Americas Cup, the Monsoon Cup is the only yachting event to utilise Virtual Eye; a real time, 3D sports graphics package for television and the big screen.

During the races, the technology tracks the boats live, by installing custom-built trackers in each yacht.

Virtual Eye helps the ‘unskilled eye’ to see the position of the yachts during races to allow spectators to keep track of the action, aided by computer graphic overlays.

Supporting features such as grid lines showing the yacht’s position, and circles indicating changes in speed, help viewers to understand the subtleties of match racing.

Like a video game, there are an endless range of camera angles, with fast-forward and rewind functions available for post race analysis.

For more information on the Monsoon Cup, visit: http://www.monsooncup.com.my/