Future gadgets

On an offwind leg, you are approaching the leeward mark, but a competing boat is closing the distance from behind, and tracking a path that would take it in between your position and the mark. You reach the two-boat length circle and hail “No Room,” but your competitor vehemently disagrees. Moments later they are rounding the mark inside of you, and the air is littered with nasty dialogue.

There is a protest protocol to deal with the ins-and-outs of this situation, but Mike Reifer believes there is a cleaner solution to this common occurrence. For the past 5 years, Reifer has been brainstorming a project to provide precise information regarding the proximity of a boat to a rounding buoy for the purpose of accurately defining the two-boat length zone and fairly applying RRS 18.

An engineer by profession, Reifer has developed a fully functional prototype that consists of two components: a transmitter that would be attached to a rounding buoy, and a receiver mounted on a competing boat. Essentially, the device provides the distance from the buoy to the boat on an LCD readout. Exceedingly accurate and tested thus far to a distance of 225 feet, Reifer plans to soon integrate an enunciator light and/or audible signal that would be set to activate at a preset value (ie, two of the boat's lengths).

Initial applications could be in umpire format events such as match or team racing to assist in penalty calls, but with the advent of how tracking transmitters were used in 2007 for events such as the Sonar Worlds, J/105 North Americans, and this week at the Acura Key West to use for replaying races, perhaps an all-in-one device that handles all these needs (how about position on the start line?) might not be too far off in the future. -- For additional details on Reifer’s device: http://roab.com/index.html