A yacht race will be held next Sunday. I will pick two major locations on the
batmap, and you will have 24 hours to prepare your waypoints for the race.
Full rules will be posted at that time, with the jist of the contest being
'get from here to there as quickly as possible'. Entrance fees will be 10k
gold, and 75% of the sum of entrance fees will go to the winner, with the
remainder to go to the pot for a future race.

Transfer your entrance fee with the transfer message 'Racing' or something to
that effect to me (ooga) at least 24h before the race. No entries will be
accepted after the start and endpoints are chosen.

In order to keep things fair in case a new quest comes into the game in the
meantime, ships will be limited to what's available as of this writing: cabin,
cargo, class2, console, create, sailor_quarters. You don't need to have all of
those, but you must not have any new ones. Additionally, this is a contest for
sailing, so I will not allow any gust of wind or other ship-specific spells to
be used. Additional contest classes may be opened in the future.

If you don't have a ship yet, but want to participate, be sure to get orders
in soon: it could take some time for your friendly merchants to create them...

--ooga

So, there has been a little talk about this yacht race, so I figured I'd put
some sort of note here...first of all, I will not be participating in the race
(for prize money at least). Second of all, in response to this channel
message:
[mnavy]: and that there is no skill whatsoever invovled in winning the race
except who has the highest level sailors?

That is only the case when sailing in a straight line. My intention for this
first yacht race is that it will be at least partially a little skill with
picking waypoints...do you use enough to autocruise? Or do you autopilot? Do
you take a windy shortcut? Or do you take the open seas? Etc. Granted, this is
the first race, so it may be a bit out of tune, we'll see, and adjust during
future races.

Why do I host this? Well, primarily, I think it'll be fun. I don't think that
all too much has been done to see the different effect of ship waypoints; does
different water type affect speed? etc.

As for the 10k entrance fee? I wanted something small that most people could
afford -- I assume that most ship owners could afford to throw away 10k for a
little fun. And, if we get enough people in the race, then it could be a good
token prize for the winner.