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From the 13-14 of December, the Who’s Who of the Yacht Racing and Sailing industry will gather in Estoril, Portugal to discuss the future of the sport and to do deals.

As well as a packed program of discussions, the World Yacht Racing Forum (WYRF) brings together hundreds of decision makers and buyers for yacht racing products and services.

We’ve teamed up with the World Yacht Racing Forum to offer you – the who’s who – 20% off a delegate pass for the conference, plus… the first 10 delegates to register with our special discount code will receive a free Dark Blue Book worth £50.

To save over 150 Euros and get your free directory read on…

 Priority Code for World Yacht Racing Forum 2011

Attend the World Yacht Racing Forum for just 636 Euros.

Use the discount code below to receive a 159 euro discount on the early bird price (795 euros) for the 2011 forum.

Priority Code : YRB167

Register at the following address and input the code to claim your discount.

http://www.worldyachtracingforum.com/register.html

The first 10 registrations using the code will also get a 2011 Dark Blue Book worth £50.

Yacht Racing Business News Update.

If you haven’t switched over to our new sailing business news portal yet, here are some of the stories that you might have missed in the last couple of weeks.

World Match Racing Tour searches for stars : Sailors on the WMRT will need to show that they can deliver value to the tour and it’s partners, not just be good at sailing. New criteria for Tour Card Holders includes marketability.

Groupama Go Global with their Sponsorship : Groupama is looking to bring together its global operations around the Volvo Ocean Race. The company has invested heavily in the new mono-hull project and is leveraging years of experience with Franck Cammas.

How to Sell Your Product to the Navy : Volvo Ocean Race sponsor Inmarsat talk about how B2B sponsorship activation works and how testing your service in extreme conditions helps positioning.

It doesn’t matter what kind of sailing event you are running, or what platforms you are trying to distribute media on or communicate to fans with, capturing the action and getting it off the boat is something that all yacht racing promoters have to deal with.

It’s pretty easy if you are the America’s Cup – you could almost use 3G to get media off boats sailing around San Francisco Bay, but the Volvo Ocean Race has a racecourse that is, as the strapline says. extreme – and that means being on the edge of the communicable world.

There are technologies however that do enable high speed, HD quality communication from almost any point on the earth. The Volvo Ocean Race has once again teamed up with Inmarsat to provide essential voice and data connectivity for the next edition of the ocean racing event. Inmarsat FleetBroadband will be used to deliver broadcast quality high-definition television (HDTV) and rich multimedia content from the competing boats to the world’s media. Inmarsat has increased its involvement in the next edition of the race and is now a Race Partner.

Knut Frostad, CEO Volvo Ocean Race said:

“I am very pleased to announce this continued and enhanced partnership with Inmarsat. FleetBroadband has proved it can deliver a flawless performance in tough conditions and that is absolutely essential for us. We need to be able to get reliable and high quality material off the boats and deliver it to the world with immediacy. You could say that the DNA of the Volvo Ocean Race is really based around moving images. And to be able to transmit these images from the boats is core to our communication and story building around the race. In many ways you could say that the Inmarsat’s FleetBroadBand has revolutionised the sport of offshore sailing.

And by enabling us to be so connected to the boats, we can monitor them 24 hours a day from our Control Room in Alicante. This is crucial for our safety procedures and the onboard safety equipment is a vital tool for the crew in emergency situations.”

Each Volvo Open 70 will be equipped with a SAILOR FleetBroadband 500, providing voice and high-speed data communications. Also onboard is a compact SAILOR FleetBroadband 150 for crew voice calling and IP data, plus two SAILOR Mini-C systems for constant positioning data and global safety communications. For the first time and after extensive evaluation, Inmarsat’s new global satellite phone, the ISATPHONE Pro, will be included in the safety kit of all the race yachts.

Andrew Sukawaty, Chairman and CEO, Inmarsat said:

“FleetBroadband gave a flawless performance during the last Volvo Ocean Race in 2008 – 09 and will continue to take media coverage of the race into a whole new era. Faster transmission speeds deliver better quality broadcasts bringing all the action onboard into people’s homes around the world. It is undeniably the world’s premier global race and one of the most demanding team sporting events in the world and we are delighted with the global endorsement of ISATPHONE Pro, with its inclusion in the yachts’ safety equipment.”

You could just mount cameras to different parts of the boats and have ‘TV execs’ pick the best bits, but the Volvo Ocean Race realises that offshore sailing is as much about the human element than the boat, perhaps more so. The interactions of team members at the extremes, the highs and lows can be captured by someone embedded in the action, not just watching from a studio. Therefore the race will once again include Media Crew Members and an (MCM) Award for the best material.

This award will also be sponsored by Inmarsat. In addition, on each leg, an MCM will win a €1000 cash prize for outstanding excellence in communicating across all media from their boat, as judged by a specialist panel. When the race concludes in Galway, Ireland, in July 2012, a €10,000 prize will be awarded to the MCM judged to have made the best overall contribution to race coverage.

Knut Frostad firmly believes the MCM is as much a key player as the helmsman, tactician and the crew.

“No story, no sponsorship, no race. It’s as simple as that.”

More Volvo Ocean Race Business News

Knut Frostad, CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race gave an inspiring presentation to the World Yacht Racing Forum in Monaco in December. Part of the wow factor of his speech was the footage, in particular the high definition sequences of spray coming over the bow of the boat with every single drop captured in crystal detail.

The full Volvo Ocean Race experience is being delivered by some ground-breaking endeavours by the boffins at Inmarsat, the global satellite communications company and a key partner of the race. This article comes from the Volvo Ocean Race Site.

Until the 1980s when satellite equipment was first hoisted into the stratosphere, the polling of race boats was a haphazard affair and navigators spent weeks or months submerged under piles of paper charts and pilotage books, making the odd ship to shore call over VHF if in range.

Messages to supporters and loved ones were handed over mid ocean to passing cargo ships until the development of radiotelephone and radiotelegraphy services via maritime radio station Portishead Radio opened up new opportunities.

Almost overnight, these created an audience for the early yacht races which, courtesy of some remarkable technological wizardry over the past three decades, has been expanded, educated and kept thoroughly entertained.

Boats are now polled every 15 minutes which has led to a similar tenfold increase in safety levels and navigators can download massive 8mb weather files in the blink of an eye, all of which allows race watchers the opportunity to stay in touch with the fleet and its movements round the clock.

The media crew between them will send back 90gb of footage during this race, using custom built high definition cameras. They can do live interviews, send as many images, podcasts, emails and blogs as they like all using the powerful Inmarsat systems with material used across the world, on television and radio stations, in newspapers and magazines and on websites.

Crews can call home for updates on their football teams – not that they do – and skippers can get their shore managers out of bed at all times of day and night for consultations over equipment failures or to organise stopover repair programmes.

The quick and easy exchange of images has also improved medical support since pictures of wounds or breakages can be wired back to doctors for diagnosis and treatment. In leg one from Alicante to Cape Town for instance, Tony Mutter was lifted off Ericsson 4 after doctors became concerned by the pictures of his infected knee. It could easily be a life-saver.

All these communications are sent via Thrane & Thrane satellite antenna to Inmarsat’s network of 10 satellites in geostationary orbit 35,786km above the Earth, all of them controlled from company HQ in London via ground stations located around the globe. The third link in the chain is Stratos, which provides the mobile satellite services via FleetBroadband, Fleet 33 and Inmarsat-C for video, audio, and text-based reports.

As to what comes next is anyone’s guess but as we have seen in this race, such sophisticated technology lends itself to a wide variety of projects including some vital environmental research which in 2008-09 is being conducted on behalf of Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics into the transport of micro organisms from one ocean to another.

In February, Inmarsat will be moving some of their satellites around to enhance their global network coverage is 100 per cent.

These activities will impact on users of broadband and satellite phone users in a narrow geographical band in Asia Pacific, including the Volvo Ocean Race fleet who will be given back up options for connectivity for a ten day period while the Inmarsat 4 satellite is repositioned. But that’s a story for another day.