Blue Book of Boats

This tiny little gadget called the SPOT satellite messenger will be one way friends and relatives of Delicate Balance can keep track of the boat’s progress. There are four buttons on the gadget, HELP for non-life threatening assistance – 911 for real trouble – and OK for tracking progress.

Check-in / OK: This feature allows the crew of Delicate Balance to let friends and family know that all is OK with a pre-programmed message along with their GPS location. With a push of a button a message is sent via email or SMS to up to 10 pre-determined contacts and the waypoint is stored in a designated SPOT account for later reference.

Track Progress: This feature allows Delicate Balance to send and save its location and allow contacts to track their progress in near real time using Google Maps. Using a SPOT account Delicate Balance has set up a SPOT Shared Page which allows it to show its SPOT GPS locations to others on a Google Map.

Here is a test run of the SPOT satellite messenger on a practice course yesterday at English Bay. The spot messages were sent every 15 minutes.

Here is a satellite view of the same map above. The spots will not be so crowded on the real Vic Maui race locations as there will only be one message per day, on the same time every day.

The count down begins, only 10 more days to go before the start of the  Vic-Maui Race of 2010.

Life is hectic and tense these days with all the last minute preparations and race practices.  How do you carry enough food for 5 big men with in a tiny 40 footer, with no refrigeration.  To make things complicated, one crew has a gluten allergy, and the captain is lactose intolerant.

The route:  2308 nautical miles – the longest offshore sailing race off the west coast of North America.

As seen on the map, there will be days and days where the boat would plainly be in the middle of nowhere. To understand the race and join in the anticipation, here is a video clip of a downwind sail from a competing boat on the Vic-Maui 2008 race.