Episode 09 - Mike Sentch

In this episode of Oceans Unplugged, Lee Gallacher hosts Mike Sentch from YB Tracking to explore the cutting-edge technologies shaping yacht racing, motorsport, and extreme adventure events. Learn about the evolution of GPS trackers, safety innovations, and how real-time visualisation enhances spectator engagement and safety.

Key Topics:
The history and technological evolution of YB GPS trackers, from basic models to Bluetooth-enabled devices
The importance of tracking for safety, including emergency messaging and rescue coordination
Diverse applications: offshore yacht racing, mountain descents, radio-controlled vehicles, snowmobiling, and adventure racing
How race viewer software enhances spectator experience with 3D visualisation, sponsor integration, and live streaming
The logistical process of building, inspecting, and deploying over 2,100 trackers annually
Real-world stories: tracker use in rescue operations, safety incidents, and salvage scenarios
Future trends in tracking technology, increasing visibility, and race engagement

A huge thank you to our core sponsor YB Tracking. None of this would be possible without your help and the service you provide to thousands of people every day.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Oceans Unplugged. I'm Lee Gallagher, formal professional sailor, mariner, harbour authority, patrol officer, coast guard officer, and lifeboatman. In each episode, I'll be sitting down one-to-one with the people who push beyond the horizon. Ocean racers, explorers, rowers, and the leaders behind the world's most demanding expeditions. We'll expand on the guests as we get into it. Oceans Unplugged is proudly supported by YB Tracking, the global leader in race and expedition tracking technology, helping bring the world's toughest adventures to life in real time. This is our stories, unfiltered and in-depth. Welcome back to Oceans Unplugged. And today I've got Mike Sench, who I work with at YB. Mike, so you've had a bit of a varied career from motorsport now to yacht racing. Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah, look, growing up as a as a Kiwi, yeah, I was generally around yachting a lot, so I had the had the background in sailing and had some opportunity to sail throughout New Zealand, which was amazing. I then moved into a motorsport career for 26 years, uh, working in in V8 supercars and a lot of other uh motorsport around the world. So uh the two came together in the in a in a perfect way when I when I got the job here at YB. They were looking to expand into motorsport, kind of have the yachting sussed, um, but out of it we've found there's so many other uh events that we can track and and help expose to the world. So it's kind of been interesting um to to learn it and taking the skills I've I've got from all those years of doing different disciplines and uh and bringing into this job.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

So YB tracking, they're uh basically a GPS tracker, but it's not just the tracking that YB does, is it? It's the the race viewer, um there's so much more to it, and there's different types of trackers. So first tell me about the different types of trackers.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Primarily our our rental tracker is the the YB3 handheld, which you can you can see in front of you there, the yellow, the yellow brick is as it's commonly known. Uh this tracker is designed to be used anywhere, really. Um it's so much more flexible, it doesn't need power, it's got a really big battery in it. Uh 15-minute transmissions will last you about a month, so it's got that longevity as well. Uh so we use that for all of our rental uh events. The YB3i, which is the permanently powered tracker that we have, the other one there, the white the white disk, that's used on uh yachts mainly. Uh but we we have those on a lot of the Amoka yachts. Um they have a permanent tracker for the big events of Onday Globe, so that sort of uh situation. The Ultims they also have it. Uh and more and more of the class boats are getting it. There's a lot of class 40s now that have those on board. Um there's no real difference in in them. Uh the YB3i is a permanent permanently powered tracker. Uh it does have the advantage of having the ability in certain circumstances to have GSM. Uh so that's our only tracker with with pure GSM in it. Um the YB3 doesn't have that option, but it's a true two-way communication. Like we can uh we can talk to the tracker and tell it what to do. Uh we can have people message from the tracker to the organizers and and vice versa. And I think that's where the little bit of a misunderstanding of trackers as a whole. People often say, why can't we just go out and buy a whole load of satellite trackers and track stuff? Because the tracker's only one part of it. It sends a message that says, This is where I am. We get that back here at YB on our servers through the Iridium satellite network, and then we've got to do with it as we need. We then analyse it, we then put it on a race viewer, we do it to a a Y blog, which is your your private uh YB account. So there's a lot more, as you say, goes on in the background than than just visualizing where those trackers are. And uh you know, this has evolved over 15, 16 years now that YB have been going. A lot of people will see that yellow brick and say, that's the same one I had in 2014. What's changed? Nothing on the outside appearance, but internally, there's probably about five or six evolutions of components as new technology comes along, we put this into these trackers. So, yes, they still look the familiar tracker you've seen all those years ago, but primarily they're uh they're a different different type of tracker inside.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yeah, I was talking to um Don McIntyre uh a couple of weeks ago, and he was saying sort of the the original yellow brick as it was, uh, and even before that on the the Argus beacons. So coming on from those, the original YB or or yellow brick, that didn't have Bluetooth connectivity, you couldn't put it to your phone, it was literally sort of type almost like the old Nokia phones to short text off of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

100%, mate. Like uh you know, when we look at where we are now, the the Mark I was a very basic tracker. Uh then we had the Mark II. You could do a little bit with it with uh a messenger app that we had, uh it was very, very basic. Then we move on to the Mark III, which we have now, which is full blue Bluetooth uh capable. You can send emails and you know SMS messages and so forth. Uh it's interesting you say about the um the having to text, if you like, on the tracker. They they are literally like the old Nokia phones, they're very, you know, you've got to push it three times to get a seat and all that sort of stuff. But we had a sailor who unfortunately hit something in a race. Uh the boat started to go down very, very quickly and didn't have enough time to do a lot of things, grabbed the satellite phone and a YB3 he had in a grab bag, got off the boat in the life road life raft, thankfully. Um however uh in in the heat of the moment, if you like, and and you're in the middle of the ocean and there's waves and all that crashing around you, he he un he got his sat phone, opened it and broke the aerial off it, you know, just in that moment that everything's all this adrenaline. So he had to then resort to the YB3 tracker, which he pressed the red button, had his e-perb going. Don McIntyre actually was involved. Um and he then spent the rest of the time typing back and forth. Like he could they could send messages on a smartphone or a or a laptop, but he was physically sending these messages. It took him ages, he didn't have his glasses, so the thing was like an inch away from his face trying to send these messages. He got them through, he was found safely, picked up, the whole system worked flawlessly. So, yeah, the the trackers are capable of all that technology, Bluetooth, all of that stuff, but still, if everything else goes wrong, it's back to basics and using it like it was meant to be.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Oddly enough, you mentioned that story. Don did talk about that in a bit more detail. So if you want to hear more about that, go and have a look at episode eight um and have a look. But yeah, one of the things that uh when uh we as a team fly out to Las Palmas for the ARC and the ARC Plus, when we're going around and we're talking to the sailors, it's because I'm an ex-coast guard, one of the things I've always said is when you step into your life rough, when it's gone south, um, well, step up into your life rough, never step down. Um, you take your EPUB, you press your button, depending on the flag state of the boat, that's going to go to the Coast Guard of that country. They know who the EPUB's registered to, and they know where it is. What they don't know, unless you've filled out sort of the CG66 or the equivalent of nowadays, is how many people are on board, where your last port of call was, where you're going, what the situation is. But as you said, um, and as I've said to the the uh crews in the ARC, is when you start short messaging off of that, especially if you're doing it to a family member or designated person ashore, you they can communicate with the Coast Guard and say, look, there's five people on board, they've suffered rig failure, um, there's an injury, this is where they are, and vice versa, they can communicate back. Um so it's a fantastic piece of communication equipment.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Absolutely, and it's interesting we get we get a lot of people asking when you push the red button, where does it go? Does it go to the Coast Guard? Does it go to emergency services? Where does it go? Uh and we've always had a rule in the business that no, it doesn't. It it goes to the race organizer, or if you've got a Y blog, a personal tracker, it goes to your first responder. And that person needs to be aware of, as you say, who's on board, where they are, all those things. Because if you push the red button and it goes to a Coast Guard, they've got no idea what this message is. It comes in through as an alert and they have no idea. Um, so yeah, definitely it works very well in a lot of conditions where other devices won't, you know, won't do the job.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, we uh when we started talking earlier, we were saying about sort of different events that we do. Um recently we dealt with uh a chap that uh doing the fastest and longest descent of uh um the uh oh what was a series of mountains now, I've completely forgotten. Anyway, near Everest. Um and uh one of his first responders, designated persons as sure as I call it, um, was actually like an emergency first response company, almost like an insurance company. Um, and we had to do a couple of test messages with them, and they would basically be the cavalry coming over the hill or dealing with uh mountain rescue or whatever. But yeah, it definitely gets through to those people that uh need it and the comms open. So while we while we're talking about that, and obviously I said about uh Chris's uh fastest mountain uh Himalayas, that was it, sorry. Uh descent, what other events do YB do? Tell tell me a bit more.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Well, um you know uh initially it was it was offshore yacht racing. That's where the whole concept with YB tracking started. The question was asked back in 2012 uh can you keep a track of these pesky yacht yachtis that keep disappearing in all directions? If they retire, we don't know where they go. So that's how it started, and uh you know that's where we do most of our tracking. Um then came along other aspects we do hot air balloon racing, um, which people find interesting to say, how do you race a hot air balloon? Uh one of them is they all start in a field, uh, I guess they say go, uh, and it's the person who gets the furthest away from that point. Yeah, it's like go, and they all take off, and you just watch them disappear in all directions. And they've got a time limit, and who gets furthest away, they win. Um we then started moving into some other some motorsport. Uh we do a lot of desert racing in America where there's no coverage from a cell phone, no GSM coverage, so they need satellites. These things are moving super quick, they're doing 200 mile an hour plus across the desert. Uh so we go out there and support quite a few of the vents over there. So that's where we we're involved in the motorsport side of things. Uh power boat racing, we're starting to get into more and more powerboat racing with UCOPRA here in uh the UK, uh trying a few different uh different trackers and and and it's been very successful. Again, they're moving really, really quickly, so we need to be able to keep up with those boats and the tracking. Um we've looked at uh canoe racing, seems to be the new thing that everybody wants to visualize. And I guess that's uh across all sports now. It it's no longer you're listening to it on the radio and listening to broadcast, it's visual. People want to see what's happening, no matter where it is. As you say, the Chris cycling down as fast as he can in the Himalayas. People who could watch him doing that descent in real time. So the the kayaking, the canoeing, the paddle boarding, all of these events are are just coming to us now and we're pushing really hard. Individual events, lots of ocean rowing, uh lots of people ocean rowing. We had um the gentleman who decided he wanted to tow a 1982 Land Rover around an airport to a hundred kilometres in a hundred hours. So we said, we'll track you if you want people to visualize it. Um and so we tracked that for him, and we and all of these are for charity, they're fantastic causes, and we like to get involved wherever we can. We we certainly can't provide tracking to everyone. Uh we probably receive over a hundred different requests a year from people wanting to do some of these things, and we do our best, we find a solution for them, and so people responses and you know making donations and all that sort of thing works really, really easily for them. So I I I'm never surprisedly at what turns up uh in my inbox every day to see what someone has dreamt up and and what they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah, recently uh I for my first uh time I dealt with a uh snowmobile race event um right up in the northern parts of Canada. Um and oddly enough, some of the the team that were on there uh were Brits originally. Um they were just uh in uh Whale Cove near Southampton Island, uh which is near where we are here in the UK, Southampton. Um and yeah, they they were tracking these snowmobiles as, as you say, well over a hundred miles an hour, or sorry, a hundred kilometres an hour uh across ice, snow, rock. Um, and when he sort of sent the course through to me, I was like, hang on, you're going across sea on these things. He went, oh no, it's about three metres thick of ice at the moment. It was like fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah, and it it it doesn't yeah when you look at some of those uh the speeds they're doing and it and it it comes down to us to be able to track them at those speeds. I mean the trackers can do the fastest a satellite tracker can transmits one minute uh intervals, and we've also got the ability to record and send 20-second GPS fixes within that one-minute packet. So we get a pretty good idea of where they are and and where they're going. Uh adventure racing is really important if they're off heading into the hills and they're going the wrong way. The organisers can obviously message them on the tracker and say, hey, you know, you're off course, we're not going to tell you where you've got to go. Another one we do is a lot of reality TV programs. Um where they're in the background, we we don't get seen, we don't get, you know, nothing, nothing happens, they're all remotely out in the middle of nowhere. So the communication between the contestants and the race organizers or the event organizers is via the YB3. Um and they've got set areas they're only allowed to be in, so if they go wandering around, we can see if they go outside of that exclusion area, if you like, uh, and they get a beep on the tracker saying you better head back the other way because you're you're off piste, if you like. So yeah, we it it's uh we're always thinking of solutions for different events and helping different people.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah, uh you're saying about that sort of safety side of it, if they're going off track. If I remember correctly, last year we done a I think it was a motocross or motor racing with motorbikes going through was it Thailand or Philippines or Indonesia or something like that? And I've seen the video on YouTube that the guy literally goes off track, disappears down a hill, gets upside down with his head sort of wedged in a tree and his bike in the in the water. But he managed to get the the helmet off and press the button to the team guys, and then obviously the sort of rescue guys is part of their team uh managed to find him and fish his boat uh his uh well boat bike as it became out of the water.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

It it is, I mean that that whole there was a reason that the Rimba raid came to us. Um yes, it's in a jungle environment. Uh there's a lot of foliage. Our track is uh are strong enough to to punch through most of that. And and absolutely, when you look at the conditions, y you look off the side of the track and you and you can't see a meter uh either side. So the fact that there was two riders, one went down the bush, the other went into the creek, which was sort of I don't know how you managed to do it, it was very slippery, a lot of clay, a lot of water around. But it was kind of behind you, so if you rode past, you would never see them. The fact they can push that uh that red button and be found within around about five metre uh from where they are is the accuracy that we have. You know, these people are are so thankful. Um we always say when we're doing uh some of the motocross events in America to put the tracker on the rider, don't put it on the bike. A lot of them say, I just want to put it on my bike and I'm not worried about it. But you know, when you look at the sheer drops they're doing in some of that desert racing, if the bike goes one way and they go the other, you know, as much as we want to find their expensive bike, we'd rather find the rider. So, you know, you've got to have a look at that safety element and make sure that you know people understand what this tracker actually is for. It's not just to record where you're going and cause compliance, there is definitely that safety element to it.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah, yeah, and and it ties back in with that visual as well that we were talking about before. So we're able to follow them because like with yacht racing, it traditionally it was once they went over the horizon, that was it, people's kind of forgotten about it. Whereas, like with the Golden Globe race now, they are able to track them. We can still, even though they're sort of sailing in those conditions where of 1968, where they don't necessarily have the technology uh that we have now, but us as the spectators, we can see them visually um on the course, etc. And now YB's got a new race viewer which is a lot more sort of 3D and uh and uh engaging?

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, 100%. Uh we had the what we called our legacy viewer for from the start, and it just becomes an evolution of how people want to view things. Uh we looked at some of our customers and talked to them about why they were struggling, what we could do to help them. Um, a lot of that came down to sponsorship, and as anybody knows out there trying to get a sponsor these days is hard work. Uh they want their money's worth out of it. So we then thought about it, and over the last two years we've built a brand spanking new RaceViewer Pro. Uh it is 3D, which works really good for your kind of land-based. It is good visually for ocean racing because you can kind of get a perspective of where the boats are. A lot of people like the 2D version which we have. You can click the button, it goes back to the good old 2D, north is up. But for sponsor and sponsor placement, we can put them now, we can put sponsors on the ocean and have boats sailing past the logo. We can have them scrolling, we can have them popping up out of the ocean, we can have them um hovering in mid-air and follow the viewer as the viewer turns the map, the logo will follow them. All of this has become hugely popular with our customers now that we have launched it. Uh, and we find that it it is helping. You know, sponsors are really enjoying the fact that they can see their logo continually within the event. When we look at the Google Analytics afterwards, we're seeing more people following the races every year, but because they're getting value for what they're seeing. Um people following are as critical as anybody. Yes, some people don't like it. It's like when you get an app changed on your phone, it takes a while to get the hang of it. Some programs change, but eventually people come round to it. Once they get to use it, it's it's a tool that they can really dig into. Having the live stream in the corner of the race viewer when a race starts is absolutely fantastic. Having that you YouTube there that you can you can pop in and out of to see what's happening on the start. Um, we've worked really hard. There's some more features in there that wasn't in the last one. Uh, you can put social media posts on tracks now, which is really important for the event organizers to keep people up to date on what's happening. Uh so we've kind of really listened and integrated as much as we could, and we will keep adding to that as we as we find we can do it. Um, and certainly it's it's it's night and day compared to what we used to have.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Yeah, you're saying, in fact, I've just grabbed my phone. So, one of the events that um the the sort of live streaming, I think it was Louis Habib and Lucy Jackson on the start liner, the Rourke 600. And Louis literally set his phone up, excuse the state of mine, it's bulletproof case, I've dropped it a few times, but they had it on a tripod, showing out to the start of the course, and their front camera filming them, and it's just in the bottom corner of the screen. And they used that same method on the start of the 151 MIGA a couple of weeks ago. And um, yeah, from what I understand, the the viewer figures and engagement is really up on that.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah, and it's as I said before, it doesn't matter what you're doing these days, people want to be able to see it. It doesn't matter if you are in the back of beyond or whether you are in the middle of the ocean. People know that you can be found and know you can see. The fact we use Iridium network, um, you know, 66 satellites orbiting the Earth from pole to pole, there's nowhere you can't be found. And as you say, those snowmobile races up on the top of Canada, uh, it's i it just brings a whole different dimension. Uh it's great for the race organizers, it's great for the sponsors, it great for the followers. It just is entertainment and that's what people expect.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah. I mean, with the sponsors, as you said, they they want that return on investment. Um One of the customers that I was dealing with last year, the Bank of Philippine Islands Wealth Management, last year they used the Legacy Viewer, this year they've used the RaceViewer Pro. And talking with them and looking at the Google Analytics, the actual engagement was 800% up. And the difference of viewing went from 1 minute 20 seconds per boat average to over 8.5 minutes per boat average. And I've got a race coming up fairly soon, which is Round Long Island race by Sea View Yacht Club in New York. And one of the things on the new race viewer is the cameras that we've got set up. We've worked out with the club, they've fortunately found the links for me on YouTube of live stream YouTube links. So as they start the race, which is off of Ellis Island in New York Harbor, and at the Statue of Liberty and Coney Island, in those cameras, although we're putting it so the camera will zoom on the mapping to those locations, the YouTube link is in there so they can live literally watch the racing as it goes by, see it on the mapping, use the leaderboard. There's just so much more there to get the spectators really engaged.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

100%. I mean there's lots of things that we're going to bring on board in the future, if you like. Uh we don't want to do too much straight off, but any engagement's good engagement. Um as you say, when you're looking at those sort of figures, people watching, the function now that we have, if you click on a team, you can share that team link with people. Um and and that's been huge. The the amount of people that found that click on it and say, hey, you know, here's so-and-so, our friend, he's he's sailing in this race. Have a look. It's just another way to get people to look at those viewers. So, you know, we're we're happy with it. We've got some extremely happy customers, which is even more important, obviously. Uh, and we're just going to keep building on it as as we go on.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah, you were saying about the social media bits as well, that they can upload pictures. I think one of the events is a guy rowing around the world at the moment. Um, he's put loads of bits up. I can't remember off the top of my head who it is, but uh definitely worth a look um at all of the new race viewers. So coming away from the race viewer, behind you I can see a load of trackers. What is it?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

So basically, I'm down in our where we do all of our manual work on the on the trackers. I mean, we've got as of this month, I think it is, we've just had another 200 trackers built. We have a fleet of 2,100 trackers. Um I mean, we're doing over 300 events a year, as you know. Um, and when it comes into the busy season which we're in now at the moment, which is sort of May, June, July, then it comes back into September, October, all those trackers are out the door. There's nothing on the shelf behind me, um, and they'll be out in events. So when they come back, they come into this area, they're taken out, they're inspected, they're cleaned, they're put onto a test mode, they then go onto the charging mode, they get then decided do they need a pouch, do they need an aqua pack, do they need anything at all? They get put in the pally case and then they're out the door again. And we try to turn those trackers around in sort of a couple of days if possible, because we need that to be able to send them out to the next event. So the team spends a bit of time down here. We've got a complete charging rack behind me here that makes sure that everything is absolutely spot on. Um, also in this area down here, we have our workshop. Uh, so we build and service all our trackers on site here in the UK. Uh, they're designed, they're built not far from where I'm sitting now by a team of a team of people who work for our company ground control. Um they build the trackers for us. So we can keep control of things a lot better. Um, people have often said, why don't you have these all over the world? And we're like, well, we need them here because we need to send them and keep them flowing through the system in those in those busy times. So uh a lot of work done down here. We we pride ourselves on having the most reliable trackers, and that does take quite a lot of work. I mean, these things get a real punishment. Uh, when you consider putting your hand, if you've been on a boat, scooping your hand in the water at a slow speed, there's a fair bit of force. But you know, when you've got an amoka doing 25 knots crashing through the southern ocean, and one of these trackers is on the back of the boat, they they get a fairly hard time. So we've got to make sure that we're happy, they are ready to go out the door, they've tested, they've passed, and they're ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Yeah, when I spoke to Pip Hare, I think she was saying her record for making a cup of tea at sea was 37 knots. So if you imagine that bow wave coming over the boat, one cubic meter of water weighs one ton in weight. So that's as you say, it's a hell of a lot of pressure that's being forced into a tracker, the screen, the pouch, everything else.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah, and it we we try to put the we've got the high and dry uh motto in the in in here, but you know, a lot of boats, it's difficult. A lot of the one-make series when you're digging with Figaro's, you know, the mini 650s, class 40s mockers, all those sort of boats, uh they're not designed to have things tacked on the back, they're designed for lightweight. So we have worked with some of the classes to try to find the best position to put them. Some boats, like the uh production mini 650s, they're a fiberglass ply construction. Our trackers will transmit through fiberglass, no problem all. They uh hate carbon, kevlar, aluminium, steel, all of those ones that don't go through. So we can place them internally in the boats. Then you kind of fall into the scenario, well, hang on, that one's by the mast, this one's on the stern. It's not a very big boat, but if it's very close racing, we need to have them in the same place. So generally it defaults to the to the stern, to the push pit, it's out of the most of the spray that's coming over the bow. Um so we we try our best to make sure that they're in the correct position, they're protected. If it's really, really bad, like Sydney Hobart, uh, can be really rough through that. As we know, we like to put them in their aquaps, which gives them that next level of security and and looks after them a little bit better. But we do our best, we we generally lose a few a year and and a few do get destroyed, but you know that that's part of what we do.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, I I mean I've done the Sydney Hobart, so I know how uh uh how much of a battering that event can take. Um but uh as you said that we do lose a few. Um I was just talking to Glenn Sandler and uh we're gonna be talking to a friend of his, Matt Mason, who rode from Australia to Africa and unfortunately took a full inverted roll and lost the tracker overboard. So yeah, we do lose the old occasional one. I think we've had uh a car roll and crush one of the uh trackers as well in one of the mate racing sports.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah, that was uh in in America, one of the side-by-side um had had a massive when you see the conditions these people are racing in, they're not racing on on sand in the desert, as I say. They're racing up rocks, they're climbing up rocks, and he was coming down a rock and that and the vehicle rolled, bounced, it the tracker was thrown a lot with a lot of the other um equipment in the vehicle, throwing out and the roll bar landed on it, squashed it. Um so that was uh that was a bit unfortunate. But you know, we had a uh a person contact us one day by email and said to us, uh, we found your phone. We were like, A phone? I'm not sure. So we we started communicating with this with this person, and it turned out there was a rower who left Peru uh on a on an Atlantic crossing and unfortunately had to get off the boat. The weather was really bad, the thing capsized, it went upside down, it was falling apart. So safely the the rower was taken off, the boat was left, we tracked it for a long time. I mean, if you turn one of these YV3s down to once every 24 hours, you're talking 280 plus days that we can track a boat. This boat actually broke in half, and what this person had found many, many, many thousands of miles away from where they it they were taken off, was the bow of the boat with our tracker still attached to it. It's actually up here on the shelf. It obviously wasn't working anymore, it had spent a lot of time in the water, the battery was clearly flat. But that was I think about twelve, thirteen, fourteen months afterwards. Um we do track a lot of boats for for salvage, uh, and it's quite frustrating to watch them because you'll see them on the map, they're heading for the land, they're heading for the land, the weather will change, and then around they go in the currents and back they go. So a salvage team will go out within a certain limit of the land. They're not going to go out to the middle of the Atlantic try to find this, it's too expensive. So we do turn the tracking down. When they salvage team get closer, we turn it back up, and then they can recover the boat. So that's another part of the service we do uh for for pe for private people and and for competitors as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Wow. Yeah, uh if only some of our trackers could talk.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Well, thank you very much, Mike, for talking to us about the biggest.