Half an hour before the start, the team must decide which is the favored side of the course. Radios and mobile phones must be taken off the boat six minutes before the start. Then the crews are left to their own forecasting abilities, occasionally relying on a crewman tethered to the top of a 100-foot mast. Since '96, a weather buoy has bobbed in the gulf where the challengers do battle. It was put there by the America's Cup Challenger Association so all of the syndicates could get information from the buoy.
Meteorologists keep strange hours.
Badham is up at 4 on race mornings to check the first weather forecasts of the day. I take my two laptop computers down to the tender, and during the tow out, I just keep getting data out, refining the forecast. After the radios come off the boats, I pray.