Dear Skippers, Sailors, Fans and Friends: Once again in 2010, the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac will provide satellite-based tracking of boats in the race as they progress up Lake Michigan in partnership with IonEarth. This note is to provide you with several important details on how to follow the race. Please forward it to friends, family or anyone who’s interested in watching the racing unfold.
There will be two ways to access the website. First, you may go to the main CYC Race to Mackinac site: www.cycracetomackinac.com. In the upper right corner of the page, you will see a button with the IonEarth logo. Clicking on that logo will bring you to the main tracking page.
The second way to access the website is directly. The URL is ‘www.ionearth.com/2010/cycracetomackinac/.
There are several important notes for you to keep in mind while accessing the site:
1) Once you get to the site, which we believe will be very intuitive to use, your first step will be to select boats to track. A ‘boat selector’ screen will help you to do this. We believe you will find it easy to quickly narrow your choice to only those boats you are interested in. Only after you select boats to track will you be able to see any data on boat locations, progress, etc. You may select a maximum of 30 boats, which will allow you to view any complete section in this year’s race.
2) Once you have selected boats to track, the current position of those boats will come up. Mouse over any boat icon for information like the boat name, sail number, speed, heading and so forth. In addition, you can replay the race to see how the boats you are tracking arrived where they are.
3) Once you’ve selected boats, your selections will be stored on your computer. If you want to change your selection, use the button on the page that allows you to ‘Click Here to Select Boats’ to change the boats in your view.
4) Boat positions will be updated every 15 minutes throughout the race. This is a significant upgrade compared to the hourly updates in previous races and will, we hope, increase everyone’s viewing pleasure! 5) There will be a help button and support contact information on the website should there be any problems or confusion in using the site. We encourage you to use them.
6) The websites above should work on most web-capable phones. If they do not work on your phone, we suggest you use the mobile website to track the race www.ionearth.com/2010/cycracetomackinac/mobile (this site will come up shortly before the race begins). The mobile site will simply list boats and their distance to finish in a low-bandwidth format. To use this site, you’ll select a section, then the boats in that section will come up in table form.
SKIPPERS: As a reminder, you will pick up your trackers as part of registration at CYC Monroe. After you have completed registration in the Commodore room, you should head down the hallway, following the signs) to tracker pickup. Once there, you will be given your transponder and mounting/testing instructions. A copy of those instructions is located by clicking here. It is important that you install and test your tracker (by going to the website indicated in the instructions) as soon as feasible after you get it. You should allow time to contact IonEarth and correct the issue should your tracker fail to work upon installation.
We look forward to seeing everyone on Chicago and online, tracking the race. If you have any questions, please contact us at racecoordinator@chicagoyachtclub.org Best Wishes,
Winn Soldani Vice Chair 2010 CYC Race to Mackinac
Very unhappy with the tracking this year. 75% of the time there is no tracking available. the site doesn’t automatically refresh to keep up with the race. you have to manually refresh and then choose your boats all over again. As of Sunday 6:30am there is no tracking of any division. Doesn’t even list the NMtF or knots. Very disappointing.
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