From the start gun in Opua to the last boat home, the 2027 fleet will report its position once a second, and anyone with a computer, tablet or phone can watch - live!
Bay of Islands Sailing Week will look different from the shore this January. Every yacht in the fleet will carry a tracker about the size of a VW key fob, sending its position once a second over the mobile network to a live race map. It needs no phone and no app, and it draws nothing from the boat's batteries. Our reporting will have full race tracking live, and after the each race completes, you can watch the replay of the race action.
The units are AquaGPS RX race trackers, using a race management platform made by NZ Boat Register. The Lower Hutt company is better known for the free nationwide register for recreational boats it launched in 2024, and it is sponsoring the regatta, which runs from 24 to 28 January, with a tracker for every entry.
"What happens on the water is on your phone in under two seconds," says Sam Allen, NZ Boat Register's co-founder and managing director. "It's fantastic for spectator engagement as well as race management."
Second by second
Most race tracking in this country shows boats hopping across the chart in jumps. At one-second intervals, they sail across it. You see each tack as it's thrown, and when a new breeze line fills from one side of the course, you can watch who gets to it first.
Sam sent through a replay of a recent race around Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbour while we were on the phone. Press play and the fleet comes off the line, every boat dragging its track behind it. Speed it up, slow it down, wind it back to the start, or tap a boat to see its name and boat speed.
What we saw was the first version. By January, Sam says, the platform will have race statistics and boat-against-boat comparisons, open to spectators as well as skippers. "For public races it means every one can see the action and the data. Making it more exciting and helping people get excited and answer the question .. what happened out there?"
No phone required
Anyone who has tracked a race through a phone app knows how it goes. It’s free and awesome. But for most the app has to stay open, the battery is flat by lunchtime and the phone spends the day in a wet pocket.
"You don't have to worry about keeping an app open on your phone, or having a phone that drains battery," Sam says. "It's just a little standalone thing that connects to cellular networks and pumps the data out."
The RX works inshore, wherever there's cell coverage. It has no screen so a crew can't read anything off it, and that means it can go aboard in smaller classes where phones are banned, "You can clip them onto your life jacket, to the mast, stern rails, whatever you want. And then you're just off."
Racing on the big screen
Each race is set up ahead of time, so anyone following before the start sees a countdown to the gun. Every race has its own link and QR code, and public races are open to whoever wants to watch, on a phone, a laptop or the screen above the bar.
Boating NZ and Go Boating are media partners for the regatta, and we'll be embedding the live map and the replays in our race reports. Read how the day unfolded, then press play and watch it happen.
Sam has already seen what a screen in the clubhouse does to a crowd. "Hardest thing for clubs is people not coming in, spending the money, buying the beers, hanging out," he says. "Whereas when we put this up on the screen, people come in and talk. They ask each other, why did you take a tack there? That change of course we all took, did you also see that big lift that came through?"
He wants that same reaction from people following from home or overseas, and he wants it to bring them north next summer. "For more people get engaged and say, man alive, that was a really cool race. I want to do that next year."
When a boat goes its own way
Race officers get something out of it too. Sam was on a committee boat recently when one yacht broke away from the fleet on a tack nobody could make sense of. Then the crew called in. They had lost a bolt from their swing keel and were heading home.
A week earlier, at a 30-kilometre canoe race, a paddler hit a log, broke their canoe and made for the nearest beach. With trackers aboard, the rest of their crew could see exactly where they had gone, and kept racing.
"You can see when a boat is not on course, or a boat stops, or someone hasn't come back from a race," Sam says. "All of a sudden you know where they are, or where they were."
Beyond the keelboats
The RX is the racing cousin of the AquaGPS satellite tracker NZ Boat Register released in May. That unit lives on a boat full time, switches to satellite when the cell signal drops out and logs a position every two minutes, up to 85 nautical miles offshore. The RX gives up the range for pace: cellular only, and every second.
Sam wants it on anything that races. "Imagine every wing foiling event having the ability to have live tracking for all their wing foilers," he says. "Imagine every long-haul race being able to be tracked live, and anyone checking in at any time." Jet skis and canoe racing are catered for and on his list as well.
Clubs can set themselves up on the platform, load their own courses and members, and create and share races. The trackers can be hired for an event or bought outright for $299 plus a monthly data plan. A club that owns a set pays nothing more to run a race.
There are a number of units in the hire fleet at the moment. Sam says he can bring in more if the demand is there, and he wants to hear from clubs keen to trial it. "We're trying to find as many people to use it, give us feedback and make sure it's built for New Zealanders and what clubs, spectators and people out there on the water want to use."
Photos are on the horizon to build on the engagement. A shot taken on the water already carries its location and time, so the plan is to pin each one to the course map at the moment it was taken.
The hardware is built for export, and Sam can see a tracker on every small New Zealand boat shipped offshore to race. "People back home could follow all of our races around the world and see them live on the water."
First, though, Opua. The Notice of Race for BOISW 2027 is out, the regatta's future was secured by private donors earlier this year, and Wired and Equilibrium are taking their rivalry to the bay courses. This time, everyone can watch it play out.
