On Sunday September 28, 14 identical steel yachts and their crews will face all the challenges the sea and the elements have thrown at sailors for hundreds of years, but with the aid of technology, they will never experience total isolation. The Global Challenge yacht race is the brainchild of round-the-world yachtsman, Chay Blyth who established the Global Challenge in 1989 to give ordinary people a chance to experience competitive sailing. Apart from a professional skipper, many of the other crew members in the race are volunteers who pay about $30,000 for the privilege of sailing all six legs of the round the world race. Some join for just one or two legs. The race stops at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Wellington, New Zealand; Sydney, Australia; Cape Town, South Africa and Boston, US, before finishing 10 months later back in Southampton, UK. This, the second Global Challenge, sees British Telecom as its primary sponsor. To support the race, it has developed a computer and communications infrastructure. The systems combine satellite technology with delivery channels such as the internet, to provide constantly updated race news and results to people around the world, as well as enabling communication to and from the yacht skippers and their crews. Communication with all the yachts will use the network of geostationary Inmarsat-P Ltd satellites. Each yacht has a small antenna connected to an on-board C-Sat communications satellite transceiver. The yachts also have a Global Positioning System receiver on board, which uses the US military’s positioning satellites to calculate the longitude and latitude of the yacht, giving its position to within 100 metres accuracy. Internet users will get race information from a special race Web site. The site includes constantly updated race results, charts plotting the position of each yacht, weather information, news and background on each of the yacht skippers and crews, video and audio clips of the race. There is a virtual tour of a yacht using Apple Computer Inc’s Quicktime plug-in software, which enables visitors to get a 360-degree tour of a race yacht from three vantage points, the chart table, the galley and the cockpit. There is also a special software package for the principal race sponsors and media. This is a Windows95-based software package, that enables users to download race information from the internet and then manipulate it further. Users will be able to select which yachts they wish to plot, chose specific regions on the charts and zoom in on them down to a five mile area, use distance measuring tools and generally get more detailed, in depth information about the race. The principal 14 sponsors have each sponsored an individual yacht. They include 3Com Corp, BT-MCI joint venture Concert, Motorola Inc and Toshiba Corp. British Telecom’s project manager for the race, Phil London says the Global Challenge is a great example of business partnering in action. All the companies are looking for the same things out of the race. Raising their corporate profile, using the hospitality functions to network and entertain customers and prospective customers, and building relationships with potential partners.
