Harbour’s amphitheatre lends new dimension

Sydney: For the first time in Olympic history sailing is being held on an enclosed waterway - Sydney Harbour.

But the harbour is not just a spectacular waterway, it is a working port. For 15 days of the Sydney Games, 275 competitor boats, 140 support boats, 125 race management boats and 40 traffic control boats will take to the water. Not to mention the hundreds of spectator craft and normal maritime traffic such as ferries, water taxis, container ships and oil tankers.

"We have the biggest control fleet ever on the harbour," said Neil Patchett, spokesman for the Waterways Authority, which has boosted its dozen or so fleet to 40 to manage the non-racing parts of the harbour.

The authority has closed the harbour to commercial ships between 11.00 am (0100 GMT) and 5.00 pm and set 473 yellow buoys to map out an Olympic exclusion zone.

A speed limit of six knots has been imposed to prevent boat wash interfering with races, but with so many large luxury cruisers on the harbour wind-shadow has emerged as a hazard.

Wind-shadow is where a large vessel creates a wind vacuum, which can stop the Olympic dinghy class dead in the water.

But the toughest job rests with Olympic officials who have to manage the largest Games venue at 70 square km (27 square miles), not to mention the fact that the five sailing courses (three inside the harbour and two out) are moveable playing fields.

And after two days of light winds sailing officials have struggled to finish races and vacate the harbour before it re-opens for commercial ships.

So far winds have been light and variable, but if they strengthen and remain fickle race officials are set for hectic days re-setting courses, even mid-race, if winds shift five to 10 degrees.

"We have the largest field of play and most fluid field of play. It's harder to position your racetrack exactly where you want it," said Peter Moor, technical manager for the sailing.

"It's not like athletics where you can draw a lie in the turf." And it's not just a matter of guesswork where to drop the marker buoys - they have to be positioned according to Global Position Satellites. For offshore courses where the Soling keelboats and Tornado catamarans are racing, that means dropping new buoys with 40-60 metre deep anchors.

"It's not such an easy thing to do to pull up an anchor offshore," said Moor. "These races are fairly short, generally the target time is 40 or 60 minutes, so there is not a lot of time to do a change of course."

For a sport that has struggled in the past to attract a large audience, the harbour's amphitheatre has created another dimension to Olympic sailing - live TV broadcasts, real-time race graphics and global access to digital timing and scoring.

Officials armed with digital boxes register electronic pulses as boats round markers or finish, which are sent to an onshore timing centre and posted to the world's media and the Internet.

The Olympic broadcaster also has cameras and digital satellite positioning equipment on boats, which allows not only live footage but live three-dimensional graphics of the fleets.

"Some competitors are not too happy with the gear, but all boats in the fleet chosen (for live TV coverage) have to carry the equipment so it makes it fair," said Moor.



(c) Reuters Limited.