I hope there's some wind at the coast, it's flat calm here in Sebring, (80 miles inland) right now.

The lake out back looks like a sheet of glass, not a ripple in sight. I think I'll go fly fishing in the canoe today!

Good Luck Ding, and all the rest, I hope you guys get to use your kites finally!

I missed the earlier discussions on the two fleets, is it 20's and F18's?.

In 20 words or less, on the video link Ding posted above, of yesterday's start, why was there a C2 starting with the 20's, and an I20 starting with the F18's?

Or were they just doing it wrong?

Think it had to do with finishing order of the previous leg.

they all start together. Two rows. First row starts at 10:00am, second row starts at 10:01am. They are lined up on the beach in the order of finish from the day before (but I'm not sure if that's on corrected or actual finish time).

To this point, they're keeping an overall finish order and a handicap on the entire fleet. The NOR and SI's indicate there will be an overall award (fastest to finish on elapsed) and several fleets...which presumably are "open" (Marstrom and Carbon20), F18, and N20.

I've got to say, the Google Glass video stream from the start provided by http://www.solarwind.solar/ is pretty darn cool. We've seen guys put together a lot of quality effort in live coverage in the past but the internet connectivity has always been a bit of an issue and it gets pretty frustrating to watch. I wonder if we're finally getting to the point where those barriers are easier to overcome.

I honestly find that just being able to watch the start through someone else's eyes is a really unique perspective and I like it. It's much better than having to listen to Clean's banter.

I might suggest that we have a fixed camera on a stick (tripod) beaming live stream of the start from a point on the beach where we can see the start rows. We can probably stream that over cell phone data now. If we do this race next year, we'll probably look into that.

Ahhh Soo...

That makes sense. Thanks!

I'm seeing a couple small patches of ripples out back right now, out of the south, only about .5kt gusting to 1kt. 90% of the lake is still glass.

I sure wouldn't want to try to sail in it!

HOLY COW. Ladies and Gents, we have a race. Overall (handicap) between the Marspeed on the Marstrom and Key Sailing on the Nacra Carbon 20 are separated by a whopping total of 8 seconds going into the last leg today. That race basically resets for these two today and this one is for the marbles.

The wind is LIGHT. But there is wind. They will be able to move anyway. Surf doesn't look like any kind of an issue. It's hard to tell from the low res beach cam...but their appears to be a little more wind offshore.

http://www.verobeachcam.com/

Bouy reports are consistent with the camera observation. 8 knots off shore, 4-5 knots a little bit out, and not much on the beach. Teams will need to be careful to balance being way out for the morning breeze vs. being at the break for the light sea breeze that should start at around 11-11:45am

The team that nails the timing of getting on the surf line right when the seabreeze starts will get a little advantage. I would probably hang 2-3 miles offshore and watch the wind angle like a hawk. As soon as an easterly shift starts to present or you see some clear wind circulation close to shore, try to start working down to the beach. Pay particular attention the the compass heading when on port gybes and watch for it to start veering west as you get closer to the beach. When that happens, take that western veer (although it feels "bad") and run it all the way back in. If you time that right, the gybe back to starboard at the surf line might be the last gybe that will take you to straight to Cocoa.

Teams that wait too long and catch the seabreeze shift late (when they see other teams getting into it down by the shore) will be eating a much bigger lift (sailing downwind = not good) to get back to shore and will be covering a lot of extra water.

But, teams that go to early for the sea breeze will find themselves on the beach with less wind than the guys offshore.

There will be a little dice rolling today but a sharp eye, clear head, and different experience will be fun to watch on the trackers. It's too bad the seabreeze won't be stronger and have more of an effect - but it's still something for the guys to try and time correctly.

Live feed is up.

looks like 10 minutes to me. Where are you looking?

No position data from the spots. Am I missing something?

OK, it's updating now.

hit stop and then play at the bottom of the page.

Beach cams are showing more breeze on shore than I would have expected...looks like the seabreeze is setting up early so expect teams to be glued to the shoreline for the entire trip to Cocoa.