Okay, now that the celebrations have died down, the hangovers are dissipating, and we can all get on with our lives following Ellen’s epic record-setting voyage, I’d like to turn your attention to the latest, greatest, innovation from Ellen and the marketing geniuses at Offshore Challenges. It’s called OC (as in Offshore Challenges)-TV, and they slapped it up on Ellen’s site in the late days of her voyage. If you didn’t notice it, or just passed over it as so much spam, I’m here to help you get back on the mystical path to Internet Nirvana. Simply put, OCTV (which you can access here) is stunning. Yes, they want to sell subscriptions. But judging from the free features you can view right now, those subscriptions might even be worth it. Just click on the “Features” button, and then if you’ve got a good monitor kick the whole thing up into full-screen “TV” mode, and sit back with a rag to mop up your drool. There’s incredible footage in each of the free features I watched. In the intro film to Ellen’s record-attempt there’s a mesmerizing shot of B&Q’s leeward float submarining entirely under water at high speed and smoothly riding back to the surface. In the Transat feature there’s classic footage of the early racers, including a comment from Sir Francis himself.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it until it is true: this is the future of broadcast sailing. We’ve already got Swedish Match TV. Now we have OCTV. If only Seamaster Sailing and the America’s Cup would go this route too, we’d never have to turn on the boob tube and watch boobs try to dumb sailing down for the NACSAR crowd at 2 am…
“No, silly, I’m not a web cam girl in mid-strip. I’m on OCTV…!”
The Earthist Chronicles 