Welcome to the Race Data Centre, the place to find the exclusive facts and figures
that bring the Volvo Ocean Race to life. Eight times a day, we receive a flood of
data from every boat. These Position Reports give us boat speeds, wind speeds, wave
heights, temperatures, distances to the finish - and to the leader. In fact, everything
we need to understand exactly how the race is shaping up. And this is where we’ll
be sharing that insider knowledge with you.
We use the race data to drive our 2D and 3D Viewers – a must have for every spectator.
We collect, sort and analyse the facts and figures to produce our unique Form Guide.
And if you want to discover the detail for yourself, it’s all there for you. Access
the predicted data used onboard and make your own assessments with the packed Data
Tables and Data Graphs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where
does the data come from?
All the data starts with the GPS and instrument systems aboard the racing yachts.
Some is fed from the yacht’s own instruments, while some is measured by equipment
that Volvo Race Management place aboard the yachts. All the data ends up being fed
into an on-board ‘black box’ which records and averages the data, before sending
it at intervals by satellite to Volvo Race HQ. Once on the Race HQ computers it
undergoes a second stage of analysis, calculation and packaging before being sent
onto the website where it is displayed.
Why
are there so many 'No Datas' in the Tables and Graphs?
The data starts at the yacht's instrument system, gets fed into a communications
box which then transfers it by satellite back to the Race HQ, where it is processed,
sent onto the website servers, and then finally displayed. It only takes one of
these steps to fail for some reason for a 'No Data' to end up on the website. And
given that all of this is relying on high-tech electronics in a rough, wet environment,
it just happens quite often...
What
do all those funny short names mean in the Data Tables?
They are all shortened so that they fit onto the website – if you want to see the
longer version and a definition of what each data variable is, then just hold your
cursor over the short name.
How
do I change the variables in the Data Tables?
Click on the Edit button, and it will bring up a list
of all the variables for that section – click in the boxes for the ones that you
want, then click Save.
How
do I change the variables in the Data Graphs?
The same way - click on the Edit button, and it will bring
up a list of all the variables that you can plot – click in the boxes for the ones
that you want (there’s a limit of six), then click Save
.
Why are some numbers available every three hours, while others are supplied hourly?
The simpler numbers – the ones like boat speed and wind speed that are just measured,
recorded and averaged – are usually available every hour. While the more complex
calculations, like the predicted performance numbers, the gains and losses relative
to the leader and the changes in the boat's position are done every three hours.
This is partly because they require more ‘overhead’ in calculating and transmitting
data, but also because you need a reasonable period of time to elapse to see a significant
change.
What data do the race boats get?
The Race HQ sends the teams a stack of weather information – we’ve used one of the
forecasts provided for all our predictions, but the boats get two more (from different
meteorological offices), plus satellite images and radar data, along with information
on waves and currents (the latter is also included in the predictions). Along with
the three hourly position reports for the whole fleet, it’s all transmitted digitally
through the SatComs facilities that the boats also use to send back data, photos,
videos and reports to the Race HQ.
How are all the predictions calculated and why are they always wrong!?
The predictions – whether that’s the predicted routes in the 2D and 3D viewer, or
the 1 day, 3 day and 5 day predicted Leaderboard positions – are all calculated
using a technique called Weather Routing.
This is the same technique that the navigators on board the race yachts use to assess
their tactical and strategic options – in fact, with the support and co-operation
of B&G, we took Deckman for Windows (a leading navigation
software package) and had race software guru, Graeme Winn, use it to produce the
website predictions.
Weather routing uses a model of the yacht’s performance, much like the one that
is driving our Form Guide. This tells us how fast the yacht can
go at any wind speed, and at any angle to the wind direction. So when you combine
it with the weather forecast, it is possible to predict all the places that the
yacht could sail to in, say, one hour. All these places are connected by a line
called an isochrone (just as an isobar is a line connecting all the places with
an equal barometric pressure, so an isochrone is a line connecting all the places
the yacht can reach from its starting point in an equal period of time).
At the end of the first hour, the weather routing calculation checks the weather
forecast to see what the wind conditions are all along the one hour isochrone
. And then, once again combining this with the yacht’s performance model, it works
out all the places that the yacht could sail to in the next hour, to get a second
isochrone.
This process is repeated, over and over, with the two hour isochrone followed
by the three hour isochrone and so on – expanding outwards from the yacht’s
starting point like a wave rippling out from a stone thrown into a pond - only not
quite so neat.
At some point, one of two things will happen:
1. An isochrone will reach the yacht’s destination, the finish line. This will define
the fastest time that the yacht could reach the finish – and everything else in
our predictions can then be calculated. The quickest route to the finish can be
traced back through the expanding wave of isochrones, the arrival time can be predicted
and compared to the rest of the fleet to get the finish order and so on.
2. The calculation will run out of weather forecast. We’re using a 5 day forecast
for our predictions, and the longest leg is over 30 days. So clearly, the isochrones
won’t reach the finish until the leg is almost over.
That means we have to introduce another step – and that’s to go back and look at
a whole history of weather conditions for the leg. From that, it’s possible to calculate
the fastest way to sail the leg, if (and it’s a huge, multicoloured IF
with flashing lights) those average historical conditions were to actually happen.
We use this historically fastest route to guide the weather routing – the calculation
looks at where the five day isochrone meets the historically fastest route. And
somewhere around there is judged to be the best place the yacht could get to in
those five days, and all the predictive calculations are then based on that position.
So if Yacht A’ s five-day isochrone meets our historically fastest route
closer to the actual finish than Yacht B’s , then Yacht A
will be judged to be ahead.
The alert amongst you will now be suspecting that the historically fastest route
used in the calculations is going to have a big impact on the predictions. And you’d
be right. So if you want your team to look good, then non-sequential, small bills
in brown paper packets can be sent to...
No, no, sorry… I mean, it’s tough, but it’s the only way to do it, and it exactly
mirrors the problem that the navigators have on the race boats. And the whole point
of the predictions is to get an insight into their moves and counter moves.
Remember, it’s just a prediction, and it depends on the accuracy of an awful lot
of weather forecasting – is it raining today where you are? Did they warn you about
that on last night’s forecast? ‘nuff said.
How accurate is the Form Guide?
It varies – and the reasons lie in the turbulent environment of wind and water,
and the difficulty of sailing the boat consistently.
Whether the yacht is sailing on a glassy, smooth sea or in a nasty swell left over
from a storm will have a big impact on how fast it can go – but the Form Guide doesn’t
account for wave state. And even the wind speed and wind angle is only measured
at one place on the yacht (at the top of the mast), which gives us a very limited
picture of such a turbulent phenomenon.
The result is a great deal of what we call ‘noise’ in the data. In other words,
even if you sailed the boat at exactly the same wind angle and recorded the same
wind speed at the masthead, our fifteen minute chunks of data would still measure
a spread of different boat speeds. They would be similar, but different – so how
do you know what the real answer is?
The good news is that the more data points you collect, the clearer the picture
gets. If you plotted them all on a graph, you would slowly see a picture emerge,
as the points would start to cluster around a particular boat speed – and that’s
the answer you’re looking for.
Of course, we’re not sitting here at Volvo HQ plotting graphs – we’re using a set
of sophisticated statistical techniques (developed for us by Graeme Winn) to clear
away the noise from the data and give us the answers for the Form Guide.
But the rule is still that the more data we’ve collected, the more accurate the
Form Guide.
Why
is the data for some boats missing at certain wind speeds and angles?
A lot depends on how much time each yacht has spent sailing in the conditions of
wind speed and wind angle that you’ve chosen to look at – if there isn’t an entry
for certain wind angles and speeds for a particular boat, then we’ve not collected
enough data to be confident of their performance in those conditions.