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Comments on the position comparisions between Orange and Sport Elec

Following Olivier de Kersauson's complaint about Orange's position reporting compared to his record breaking voyage on board Sport Elec in 1997, there has been some heated response...
From Christian Fevrier

Olivier de Kersauson is totally right. The situation shows that when the PR people are left alone, in charge of a sailing event and without any sailing advisers and guidelines, the information can become messy.

Example:

On Wednesday 27 March, after 25 days of race, the Orange Media centre let us know that they were leading Sport Elec's record by 1935 nautical miles. The two boats were sailing on different latitudes, Sport Elec the further south.

If the media centre had used a simple navigation program, they would have discovered that Sport Elec was only 590 miles behind in longitude. This is a huge difference and you can understand why Olivier was obliged to make a statement yesterday.

All the previous Jules Verne Trophy attempts have used the same rule for the mileage in calculating the orthodromic daily distance between the two positions separated by 24 hours.

The Orange media centre calculates this differently. They use the daily log of the boat, which is often a greater distance than the usual orthodromic calculation, particularly if the yacht has to tack or jibe. And they add each daily log to the previous others. This naturally produces a very high mileage after 25 days at sea. And a higher average speed too.

In my opinion this number is of interest to learn the true speed of the boat. But not to make a comparison with another boat.

The Orange media centre uses the Sport-Elec 1997 data, i:e the orthodromic daily mileage, which is naturally smaller. So they are comparing apples and oranges!

More importantly, the past mileage also offers little by way of comparison. On the outward leg, you can sail in the middle of the South Atlantic (Orange), or closer to South America ( ENZA in 1994) or closer to Africa ( Sport Elec in 1997). So, your mileage will be totally different.

The only way to have an indication of the two yachts real gap is to compare their position with a waypoint some way ahead of the boats. For example for yesterday, you can choose the South West Cape on Stewart Island or a waypoint further south. In that case, the gap between the two yachts would have been only 265 miles! This waypoint has to be so way ahead - 3,000 to 5,000 miles ahead gives a good indication.

There is no scientific method which can give a perfect indication of the distance, because each yacht used a different track. The waypoint give you only a guess. But if you choose a good one, where the yachts will probably pass, it is the best indication and much more accurate than the Orange presentation.

In my view, the Orange media centre should stop publishing results with their method. It is not a good reward for the crew as they battle with the elements. And it is misleading for the sponsor too.

But apparently, they have decided to continue. Today, from my calculations, Sport Elec was only 572 miles behind in longitude and the lead presented by Orange is 1983 miles! With this system, if Orange was sailing ten degrees more north than Sport Elec, we could end up with a 3000 miles gap! (The more south you are, the less number of miles in a degree of latitude).

From John Stapleton

Everyone understands De Kersauson's point, but comparison with the current record holder remains the best guide as to how any new attempt is doing. It would also be interesting to have a regular comparison with the fastest previous boat to that point, but this measure is only of secondary importance. De Kersauson doesn't seem to understand basic statistical concepts very well, especially the one known as 'regression to the mean'. Any boat that is faster than all individual records between Capes etc. would not only beat the existing record, but would do it by an extremely large margin, and that isn't the aim - the aim is only to beat the current record.

From Terry Cooke, Gill UK

At the end of the day Orange are presenting the facts - Sport Elec is the holder of the record, not ENZA and it would make sense to compare Orange's time to this - anything else would just serve to confuse the non-sailing public, whom ultimately the PR is aimed at. De Kersauson is blatantly jealous of the fact that his boat has screwed up, and Peyron is getting the attention that he was vying for. Sounds like a sad old man grumbling to me!

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