2007 Transpac Yacht Charts

Unlike previous Transpac Race the entire fleet has been provided Satellite Transponders from FIS Tracking Services LLC. These position charts are generated automatically. Rather than publish position charts once a day this service will continuously monitor the progress of each yacht in the race. However, at first the positions shown will not be the current position for the yachts. Reports for the first start boats (i.e., Monday, 9 July, 2007) are every 3 hours, the 2nd (12 July, 2007) and 3rd (15 July, 2007) starts the reports will be every 2 hours. The delay is set at 6 hours. On Saturday the 21st the delay is removed and all positions will be reported in real time.

As many of you pointed out there are problems with the position transponders. This was extracted from Rich Roberts' July 18th Press Release:

Flagship's tracking program---introduced to Transpac for this 44th race---also ran into difficulties. The transponders it placed on all the boats were going dead after about five days, meaning that all of the earlier starters were not transmitting their periodic positions to satellites, and the big boats that started last were feared to follow suit.

Transpac has returned to its old system of an 8 a.m. PDT daily radio roll call to the boats for position reports.

Tom Garnier's brother, Transpac Commodore Al Garnier, said, "It's unfortunate. The Pacific satellite coverage is more complex than other places, but we haven't yet heard an explanation of the problem from anyone at Flagship."

Despite this problem FIS Tracking is updating their information based on the 0600PDT roll call positions. The tracks will now have increments of twenty-four hours.

Use the link below to access these charts by clicking on the FIS Tracking Services logo.