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Just spoke to race officials Ali Maynard & Anton Erasmus who have already been out to sea this morning to lay the marks for the course.
 Anton Erasmus tell Rob about the course.
"Interesting Conditions"
"Conditions are interesting," said Anton. "It's bumpy out there and the runs are not straight & clean. It's going to suit the guys who can milk the runs."
"We're going to be stressing the safety aspects," he added. "It's not all about winning the race; we want the guys to understand that the buddy system prevails - look after your mates out there."
So: a 15kt forecast headwind for the guys to grind into, then a "technical" downwind run to the finish. Intriguing stuff.
From our office in the DIMC, we can see the wind strength increasing by the minute. The flags are flying,the palm tree fronds are waving. I'd say it's about 10kts at the moment where we are - but I can also see much more vigorous fluttering from the flags on the more exposed breakwater. These conditions are going to make for an absolute cracker of a race...
 Ant the anchorman hoists his prize.
Barry Lewin
Barry was the first of the elite paddlers to the beach this morning. "The downwind is going to be really fast, if yesterday is anything to go by," he said. "My GPS readings were showing really high average speeds. And to me that means that the finish is going to be really close."
"Tactics? Keep Tim Jacobs in sight! Hank and Dawid are also going to go really fast upwind. Coming back, it's difficult to call. But you cannot be around the top buoy with any distance between you and the leader.
"I am SO motivated for this race. The bragging rights are huge for this event - you've got the best field ever assembled in this race and the guy who wins this will be like a ‘world champion on the day'.
"Who's going to win if I don't? It'll be the guy who's willing to hurt the most. There are a lot of very hungry guys out here today. I think it'll be someone that no-one is talking about - Lewis Laughlin..."
Live Coverage
We're battling some technical challenges at this point - we arrived at our office to find difficulties with network connections; our local cell phone sim card doesn't seem to have activated (12 hours after they said it would...).
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