Hi from a sunny Ivanpah, hot and sunny now, but a big weather change about to hit us.

It was a long and boring drive down from San Francisco on Thursday, but arrived at about 9 in the evening and started setting up Friday morning. Throughout the day, more and more people started showing up in preparation for the ‘Americas Cup’ regatta, held here every year at this time. By the end of today, there should be about 1000 land yacht pilots assembled for the biggest land yacht race meeting of the year.

It is, in fact, almost exactly 10 years to the day since the ‘Iron Duck’ broke the land sailing speed record (the record of 116mph that we have to beat), at the very same location. We are all very exited by the forecast, which is predicting big winds for Saturday and Sunday, however, we have often seen that before, only for the wind not to materialise or for rain to accompany the storm, so no counting chickens just yet. When this storm passes over on Sunday night, it looks like it will be followed by more systems 3-4 days apart, so we should have a number of opportunities in this 10 day record window.

Simon from BHP is on his way out from the UK to do some more filming and try to capture it all in HD, so we are hoping it will all come together at the right time, but it is still a very tough challenge!