Rick Deppe/PUMA/Volvo Ocean Race
Wednesday 14 January, 2009 05:00 GMT
Armchair explorers can be privy to the full Volvo Ocean Race experience these days thanks to some ground-breaking endeavours by the boffins at Inmarsat, the global satellite communications company and a key partner of the race.
Until the 1980s when satellite equipment was first hoisted into the stratosphere, the polling of race boats was a haphazard affair and navigators spent weeks or months submerged under piles of paper charts and pilotage books, making the odd ship-to-shore call over VHF if in range.
Messages to supporters and loved ones were handed over mid-ocean to passing cargo ships until the development of radiotelephone and radiotelegraphy services via maritime radio station Portishead Radio opened up new opportunities.
Almost overnight, these created an audience for the early yacht races which, courtesy of some remarkable technological wizardry over the past three decades, has been expanded, educated and kept thoroughly entertained.
Inmarsat was first set up in 1979, initially as a UN government organisation to establish a satellite communications network for the maritime community. Within a few years, it had struck up an exciting relationship with the Whitbread Round the World Race, as the Volvo Ocean Race was called in 1993-94.
In response to requests from sponsors to get 'near' live images from the boats direct into publicity packages, race organisers put Inmarsat mini-M equipment on each boat which allowed compressed videos to be sent at slow data rates back to race HQ where they were uncompressed and turned into real time video.
Compared to what we see now, those early pictures were grainy and ungainly but they marked the start of a technological revolution that, 15 years later, has transformed the race and the way it is communicated.
An analogue Inmarsat A terminal was also installed on the boats in that 1993-94 race, permitting data exchange at a relatively sluggish transfer rate of 4500 bps. The latest Inmarsat system, FleetBroadband which has been put on the Volvo 70s in this current race, transfers data at more than 100 times that speed and allows for simultaneous voice, email, internet and phone communications.
Broadband in the middle of the ocean
Boats are now polled every 15 minutes which has led to a significant rise in safety levels. Navigators can download massive 8mb weather files in the blink of an eye, all of which allows race watchers the opportunity to stay in touch with the fleet and its movements round the clock.
The media crew between them will send back 90Gb of footage during this race, using custom built high definition cameras. They can do live interviews, send as many images, podcasts, emails and blogs as they like, all using the powerful Inmarsat systems with material used across the world on television and radio stations, in newspapers and magazines and on the web.
Crews can call home for updates on their football teams - not that they do - and skippers can get their shore managers out of bed at all times of day and night for consultations over equipment failures or to organise stopover repair programmes.
The quick and easy exchange of images has also improved medical support, since pictures of wounds or breakages can be wired back to doctors for diagnosis and treatment. In leg one from Alicante to Cape Town for instance, Tony Mutter was lifted off Ericsson 4 after doctors became concerned by the pictures of his infected knee. It could easily be a life-saver.
All these communications are sent via Thrane & Thrane's satellite antenna to Inmarsat's network of 11 satellites in geostationary orbit 35,786km above the Earth, all of them controlled from company HQ in London via ground stations located around the globe. The third link in the chain is Stratos, which provides the mobile satellite services via FleetBroadband, Fleet 33 and Inmarsat-C for video, audio, and text-based reports.
As to what comes next is anyone's guess but as we have seen in this race, such sophisticated technology lends itself to a wide variety of projects including some vital environmental research, which in 2008-09 is being conducted on behalf of Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics into the transport of micro organisms from one ocean to another.
In February, Inmarsat will be moving some of their satellites around to enhance their global network coverage.
These activities will impact on broadband and satellite phone users in a narrow geographical band in Asia Pacific. That includes the Volvo Ocean Race fleet, which will be given back-up options for connectivity for a ten day period, while the Inmarsat 4 satellite is repositioned. But that's a story for another day.
- Kate Laven