Nav Rally Tracker
A few weeks back when we ran the Isle of Mordi Log Trial, Peter Turrell from Sandi was at the club to promote the SYC Cup 2010, to be held on Feb 21st. He toid us that they'd be using the new GPS based "Tacktracker" for the event. Des,Wayne & David aboard Jay Jay II were keen to give it a try and I was invited along for the ride and to aid in giving the skipper directions !
Eighteen vessels from various clubs were entered for the race and we were told that we could pick up our designated "tracker" from a boat moored off the break-water at the Marina entrance. We manouvered in to pick up our package held out to us in a fishing net, which contained a couple of caps, a pair of wine glasses and the device. We were instructed to just place the tracker (which is the size of a garage door remote) on the dash and then hand it back in at the end of the race. We could keep the other goodies!
There's not a lot of room in that small cove just outside the marina entrance and what with all the other competitors milling around for position and a fleet of small yachts training, we were all glad when it was our turn to hit the throttle and clear the area.
It was an interesting course in the shape of an Octagon with a short coming & going leg and all went smoothly as the conditions were ideal. I'm usually a 5 or 6 knot entrant so the whole event went past pretty quickly for me as we ran the course at 10. As instructed, we returned our Tracker via the fishing net - and headed in to the Marina for a BBQ lunch and to await the results.
We were told that getting the result was simple, as the data from each small Tracker is pulled into a software program on a laptop. Using the program, the organizers of the event will have allocated "gates" around the course for the boats to be timed against. There can be up to 20 "gates" assigned for a race and in yesterday's event they'd laid out 6. The program compares the times it has for each gate against those stored in the Tracker - and a list is soon printed out of the result. Jay Jay II was listed as running 4th, which we were all pretty pleased about.
The Tacktracker makes the running of a Log Trial very easy and there's bound to be more discussion on this topic and the possibility of how it may change things at Mordi for future events.
