The red marker shows the location of the sailing area. The wind was predominant from the Spinnaker park label
In summary a great regatta requires, good leadership, sunshine, warmth, good breeze, efficient race management and most important, live streaming for the world to watch and deliver value to sponsors. Without this viewers would only have a view of the score boards. With live streaming upwards of 10000 people around the globe get to share the event.
Where to begin with Gladstone. How does a club with 11 members in a remote part of Australia organise the best ever IOM World Championships. There only facilities at the sailing area was a 400 foot fishing wharf and a public toilet.
To begin with, Gladstone is a rich area exporting and processing mineral resources. Huge coal exporter, Alunina processing, Aluminium smelter, LNG exporter, power stations, commercial mining explosive manufacturing. Hence there is a lot of money pumped into the local community making Gladstone an attractive place to live with a stable climate. With this background there was potential for good sponsorship of the event.
It all starts with their overall coordinator Grant Cooper. Not only does he run his own successful media/ marketing company and has many contacts in the local community, he is also responsible for setting up the live streaming of one of East Australia's best known yacht races. I only had a brief time with Grant but his organisational and presentation skills were very apparent. Martialing a small team, they set about finding sponsors, volunteers and infrastructure for the event. They ended up with 29 sponsors and circa $300,000 with in kind contributions and cash.
The list of the main sponsors
There is a good article on how they put the live stream on the worlds web site. The link is below
And all the videos, results, galleries can be found on the same site.
In the beginning they defined KPI’s on what they wanted the event to deliver and the teams key initial task was to go out and get sponsorship as well as involve the local community.
The live stream proposed with a worldwide audience helped secure sponsors to the point they had to turn some away at the end. Currently each days videos has over 10,000 views each.
Early days watching the livestream. More chairs needed. Each A heat was a full house
The full infrastructure which was delivered in 3 days by an army of contractors and local volunteers.
The list included
Scaffolding for the race control area, launch platform and safety rails.
Supply of a large pontoon barge for the launching area
Supply and erection of marquee for the big screen TV. Think small cinema. With 40 plus seats. Competitors were glued to the racing. See picture above.
Artificial grass and mini marquees for the competitor rigging area. They did not have to worry about rain
Sheltered area for race control at entry to wharf
Sheltered areas for finishers, judges, scorers at race control area at the end of the wharf.
1 coffee stall and 3 food stalls. Competitors were given 20 dollars of tokens per day to spend on food
There was 1 air conditioned building loaned for measurement and boat storage.
In addition there was all the live stream paraphernalia, 5 cameras and operators, 4 commentators.
There were loud hailers across the area for race control to call competitors forward for their races.
On the start line there was a countdown clock for one competitor who was completely deaf.
I think the thing that stood out was the seamless organisation on the day. I noted several briefing sessions and everyone knew exactly what they were doing.
The only glitch was the wind in the mornings on the first 3 days blowing in the only direction they could not set a course.
The scoring was very slick. As soon as each race was complete the score board and fleetboard were updated and observers selected automatically
Andrew Crocker. the master controller of the scoring, heat board, observer selection and more. Six days in the hot seat. A huge thank you to the scoring team and finishing team
Every evening they had what they called "the debrief" to get competitors together socially. There were sponsors for each night eg a winch or a set of sails, a cash card up to $500. There was also a board with 52 or so cards with one joker all pinned face down. If your name was called out you might win say a set of BG sails. But if you pulled the joker you would get double the prize and anything not won the previous night. The competition ran into the final night and got down to the last two cards. The winner went away with a great haul of prizes.
Gladstone Yacht Club, venue for the debrief.
The competitor goodie bag
The all important coffee shop
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