Human Interest
Star Sailor Provides Navigation and Electronics Solution for Olympics Sailing
By
Jun 19, 2008, 13:43

Rob Emmet, Star sailor and the technical guru for Starclass.org, has developed a race management solution for the summer Olympics.

In planning for the 2008 Olympic sailing event, the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) Race Management Team was faced with the formidable task of running fair races on five circles in a confined area with light winds and strong currents. They needed a way to position race marks for trapezoidal race courses quickly and accurately while making sure that any marks that needed to be relocated were not placed inside the area of adjacent racing circles or outside a strict boundary established by Chinese authorities.

ISAF hired US based Pyacht.com for the task, and the solution they proposed was to use navigation software and DSC equipped radios on both the signal boats and the race marks. The radios on the Signal Boats would be programmed to “ping” the radios on the race marks, and those radios would then send back a radio signal that included the precise coordinates of their location. The race officers on each circle will be able to quickly determine the correct location of any mark they need to set, and then verify and log the position where the mark was placed.

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