DISAPPEARING OVER the horizon is always a tempting prospect, particularly if one has the wind in one's sails on an ocean-going yacht. However, Sting's lyrics to Every Breath You Takeare probably more appropriate now than Masefield's epic poem, Sea Fever, for the Volvo Ocean Race yacht crews sailing into Galway, writes LORNA SIGGINS
Thanks to the latest developments in satellite technology, there is no more “lonely sea and the sky”. Competing yachts are not just dots on a radar screen – their crews’ movements are constantly monitored by cameras and transmitted thousands of kilometres back to shore.
The "Big Brother" element allows little room for privacy and none for mutiny, while it has obvious safety benefits. In the last Volvo race, the "man overboard" alert for Dutch sailor Hans Horrevoets (32) on ABN Amro Twoin the Atlantic was transmitted in minutes to Volvo Ocean Race headquarters near Portsmouth.
Four yachts nearby were directed to change course and assist. Miraculously, Horrevoets was recovered from the water by his crew, in pitch dark and 25-knot winds. Tragically, the Dutch sailor did not survive, having been in the water for 40 minutes.
Back in 1973, year of the first Whitbread Round the World Race (as it was then known), there were no tracking beacons, no GPS navigation, no weather maps, and radios were unreliable. "We were all blissfully free of responsibilities to sponsors," English sailor Butch Dalrymple-Smith recalled in a history of the event, Life at the Extreme, by Rob Mundle.
The circumnavigation was regarded as a success back then if all boats were “accounted for” at the finish.
Fast-forward more than three decades, and the event, which is held every four years, has changed dramatically. Sponsorship and television demand crew who are dedicated professionals at the pinnacle of their careers. The Volvo 70 class designed for this race is built like a “jail cell”, with a canting or swinging keel to counter the considerable speed generated by masses of sail and a light carbon-fibre 21.5m hull.
For the first time in the race’s history, one crew member on each yacht is a dedicated media crewman (MCM) who must have technological, rather than sailing, skills. His (they are all male) job is to transmit back a daily quota of words, photographs and video to the race organisers, via Inmarsat’s fleet broadband system,
“Sending back cinematic high-definition material from inaccessible places in extreme conditions has never been done before,” says Andy Sukawaty, chief executive of Inmarsat satellite communications company, which is broadcasting the race. Inmarsat was established initially as a United Nations organisation in 1979 to run a satellite system for the maritime community.
A communications revolution began in 1993-4, when boats were installed with an analogue Inmarsat A terminal, which allowed for data exchange at a relatively slow transfer rate. Now the Inmarsat fleet broadband can transfer data at 100 times that speed, allowing for simultaneous voice, e-mail, internet and phone communication.
It means that boats are “polled” or located every 15 minutes, and navigators can download large weather files to help them plot the best course. Media crew can conduct live interviews, transmit images, podcasts, e-mails, blogs. Transmission is via Thrane Thrane satellite antenna to Inmarsat’s 10 satellites almost 36,000km above the globe.
Such is the potential of the technology, and the impact of Inmarsat fleet broadband on high-definition television, that film students can make a career in extreme sports, Inmarsat claims. It is hosting a lecture on the subject at the Galway Film Fleadh next month, in collaboration with the NUI Galway Huston School of Film and Digital Media. On June 2nd, Ian Walker, the skipper of the Irish-Chinese entry, Green Dragon, will be joined by MCMs from three of the Volvo fleet to talk about reporting the race to an audience of two billion people.