Remember when websites were the big new thing in regatta communications? Now, there’s an app for that.
With the 2014 Pacific Cup attracting 54 boats plus crews, families and friends, race organizers and the hosting Richmond Yacht Club wanted to provide all the information a crew preparing for the 2,070-mile race from San Francisco to Hawaii might need, but not via the web.
According to game developer, junior coach and general go-to guy Greg Gorsiski, it can be a burden for an out-of-towner to find Internet access, and he didn’t want to mess with the club’s existing site, so creating a regatta app just made sense. “It came down to an info-pack-in-the-pocket,” Gorsiski says. “I had already floated the idea of creating an annual app for our club, because people are moving away from websites. A post to social media might get 400 views in an hour. But that doesn’t happen at richmondyc.org. So now we have an app for the Pacific Cup, and all the clubs involved [Richmond, Kaneohe, PacCup] are tweaking their websites to be more mobile-friendly.”
Add a race-tracker app, and the event is fully mobile. Could this be the shape of SI’s to come?
