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Armchair Sailing? 

The yacht tracks for the 2010 race are still available.
»  replay the 2010 race

 


Feature Stories

Feature Stories		    
6/13/2010 11:00 PM
By Talbot Wilson

The first of more than a dozen starts is set for 2:00PM EDT on Friday when the 188  strong Newport Bermuda Race fleet gathers off Castle Hill in the East passage from Narragansett Bay to the Rhode Island Sound for  the 47th 'thrash to the Onion Patch'. Each class is then scheduled to start at ten-minute intervals for a 2-hour period until all boats are heading out to cross the Gulf Stream towards the sunny isles of Bermuda.

The best place to watch the start is from Castle Hill. The view is spectacular and the grounds are comfortable. Viewing is also excellent from the Castle Hill Lighthouse area on Ocean Drive.

Once the fleet has disappeared from view, digital spectators can follow their favorite boat, class or division from the website's Race Tracking feature.


Online spectators can follow the Newport Bermuda Race action online.  Shown above is the Open Division in the 2008 race.

On the Boat Mapper page you can track individual boats, classes and divisions and add Gulf Steam as well as wind speed and direction graphics to the screen.

Because the racing crews can also log on to these tracks, the Bermuda Race Organizing Committee will impose a tracking delay during the race in order to satisfy the rule barring outside assistance. Positions seen on your screen will be the previous position for each boat.

George Owen, of iBoatTrack, points to a few improvements to the system. “Since we last tracked the Newport Bermuda Race in 2008, we have converted our main mapping interface to the more user-friendly Google Maps first used as a trial two years ago." He explains. In addition, the former ‘Leader Board’ function has been changed to a ‘Progress Board’ which provides information based solely on the boat’s tracker.  This displays the progress of each boat on a 'percentage completed' bar. i.e. If the racer is halfway to Bermuda, 50% of the bar will be shaded blue. This is shown as a percentage of a yacht's straight-line course to Bermuda and is not a tactical estimate.