As boats arrive at Travemünde for the Baltic Sprint Cup start on Saturday, July 19th 2008 15hours organizers SAIL & RACE announced some great new web-site features to become active on that date: Satellite tracker system supplied, Weather Service, Picture Gallery and On-board video clips.

Every 30 minutes when racing each tracker will automatically send its location and identity to the Baltic Sprint Cup web site.  Web viewers at home –and afloat in the race- can see the progress of each offshore race as it happens. Each tracker is a small cylindrical device containing a GPS, integral power supply, and an Iridium data terminal. The units remain sealed for the duration of the event.  No user input is necessary. In emergency a tracker may be programmed by the race team to report more frequently and all the tracker positions will be available direct to the SAR (search and rescue) services.

Alan Green, Race Director said: “From a race management point of view it’s great for a finish line team to know when to expect finishers, and have their identities clear even at night. However we’re sure that the keenest users will be racing boats taking a very close interest in the competition!” 

Dr. Meeno Schrader, CEO and owner of WetterWelt.de will provide – as in the previous events – participants and race committee with weather reports. This year there is a change: all weather reports will be sent to the event web site and will be on-line before each skippers’ briefing.  WetterWelt will also supply the weather overlay on the tracker display – so viewers will see not only boat positions, course and speed but also weather conditions at the boats’ locations.

Henning Rocholl, Event Director, expressed thanks to SE Spezial Electronic AG, who’ve engaged specialist marine photographer Nico Krauss.  Nico joins the race team for the entire event and will feed the event web-site photo gallery managed by StockMaritime.

Five small waterproof web cameras will be passed around from leg to leg amongst the fleet. Short onboard video clips from these cameras will come up via YouTube on the event web-site.

Take a front-row seat and watch the event unfold before your eyes!

Izvor: www.balticsprintcup.com