Hi all, I just wanted to tell you about my new project, which goes live this Saturday with its first event. A little while ago I was playing around with the idea of bringing together a race series and the logistics of how it all went together. I was also doing a lot of paddling using my GPS watch to track my progress and speed. So I thought why not put the two together and so the GPS Challenge idea was born. I have now put together a website (www.gpschallenge.com.au) and we have a tried and tested race management system at the back of the website.

We are launching our first race this weekend. The format is pretty simple. Register on our website (in both the forum and the Race Management System), Log a GPS track over a 1km distance, upload your GPS track to the website (your GPS will need to allow this to happen). The race will remain open for a week. After that we will collate all the times and then post a leaders board on the website. Our intent is to run one race a month at this time. We hope, also to have a real world sprint race next year.

I know that people will talk about wind assistance or tide assistance, and they are right, however, we aren't racing for sheep stations. Our expectation is that people will be fairly honest when posting times. We do exclude downwinders. I am hoping that a few people will join us for our first race this week, allowing us to iron out any bugs that might exist in the process (lets be honest all IT related stuff ends up having bugs through it).

One last thing I would like to thank Laurie for giving me permission to post up on Seabreeze about the GPS Challenge.

I hope to see a heap of you joining us for our first event.