ILCA UK Chair blog # 114

Nov 25

I thought a short blog this week on media and digitalisation in ILCA / dinghy racing might provoke some debate. While we have seen this to the fore in the America’s Cup, SailGP and big boat racing, it is much less obvious in dinghy sailing, although slowly coming into focus. I personally believe SailGP has done a brilliant job in promoting sailing and making it something that sailing fans want to watch. Live streaming on Youtube is brilliant and is still available to watch after the event. You can focus in on just the racing or the full show with interviews and background. Clearly the racing is fast and furious even in light winds with live action both on the boats and from helicopters, which makes it attractive to many sailors. On the other hand, how easy is it ever going to be to explain intricacies of tacking upwind and gybing downwind to a non-sailing audience, even with great commentators? And this is the challenge for the sport at Olympic level – how to attract a big audience, especially non-sailors, without different formats (like short races / racing on a reach / winner takes all races) that move away from the essence of the sailboat racing we know? The debate is at the centre of our sport today – of course you need the “eyeballs” but how much do you change to get them.

The challenge for dinghy racing is bringing in the media package of SailGP in a cost-effective manner. It is very expensive to provide the high qualify media coverage that we see there and beyond the economics of even many of our largest world championships, let alone national championships or open meetings. Live streaming (on Facebook from a RIB) of a dinghy race even with a high-quality camera is not going to promote our sport in the way we would like (although I believe it is a starter). For many years now we have seen GPS trackers supplied in some events, allowing to us to “watch” races live (or indeed rerun them). While the accuracy and reliability of these have improved over time, opinion is divided on how attractive this is for sailing fans, let alone non-sailors.

As the price of these trackers drop, recently there has been increased focus on using them to spot boats that are over the starting line. There are a number of different technologies / brands in the market and we have seen trails taking place in a number of classes. There is no doubt this technology could be a game-changer at big championships in particular, eliminating general recalls (and of course no boat gets away with being over the line! ). But is has to be implemented in a way that is fair – reliable and accurate in fleets of 70 to 100 boats, with protocols in place to manage. And there remain key questions - do we really want technology in an ILCA that gives you “distance / time to the line” rather than just spotting boats over early? Once these trackers are in use, it starts to have implications for event coaching – imagine having access to your race track around the course combined with an open source wind and tide feed, open to all sailors. And there is the opportunity for use on training too.

In ILCA racing, GPS cameras and watches are not allowed (like many dinghy classes) – is this really best for the sport? Think of what Strava has done for promoting participation in cycling, allowing publishing your latest cycle, developing social interactions and even giving you a ranking on a certain road segment – imagine the conversation at the club-house “well I didn’t win the race, but had the fastest speed or I won the reach”!

Of course, in ILCA UK we try to make the most of media to publicise our events – see the race reports below published on Yachts&Yachting.com but so much of the action is also taking place on social media and for us we must continue to invest in high quality short videos and photos for social media. This is the way younger sailors are consuming content on our sport. If you go on Instagram you will see loads of content on ILCAs and ILCA sailors that is being fed to them directly based on their interests.

Snippets

ILCA UK Winter Training

For ILCA4s who missed the winter training program, we are creating 6 x ILCA 4 tickets for the 7/8 Dec WPNSA All-Regions Open Training, with a waiting list of 6 - on the basis that when that waiting list is full we can then convert it to a further group of 6.

See our calendar for more

National Training eligibility has been updated to top 50% in 2/4 of the events, with sailors who have transitioned to the ILCA 6 after the ILCA Nationals able to include their ILCA Nationals event in the ILCA 4 if they were top 50% male/female as appropriate. Note that 4/5 Jan 2025 National Training has been reschedule to 7/8 December 2024.

All other sailors welcome to come for open training the same weekend at WPNSA which will run in separate groups alongside and we are also increasing the number of ILCA 6 tickets from 12 to 24 for the 7/8 Dec WPNSA All-Regions Open Training.

Other news

Inlands photos here

Noble Marine ILCA UK ILCA 6 Inland Championships at Grafham Water Sailing Club

Noble Marine ILCA UK ILCA 4 Inland Championships at Grafham Water Sailing Club

Noble Marine ILCA 7 ILCA UK Inland Championships at Grafham Water Sailing Club

ILCA Qualifier 6 WPNSA Day 2 October 2024 – no racing but loads of photos here and here

ILCA UK Women’s Regatta video (new)

ILCA UK ILCA 6 Masters Inland Championship at Rutland Sailing Club

ILCA UK ILCA 7 Masters Inland Championship at Rutland Sailing Club

Women In Sailing Talk with British Sailing Team’s Daisy Collingridge

ILCA Women's Coaching Day at Queen Mary Sailing Club

Tri360 Challenge Fundraising – with Andrew Simpson