Navigators and tacticians were hunched over computers yesterday, trying to get a sense of race conditions for today's start of the 47th Newport to Bermuda Race.

Today's forecast predicts a healthy sea breeze for the start which should see almost 190 boats begin the biennial event.

"Everybody should blast out of here on an upwind leg," says Bjorn Johnson, chairman of the Bermuda Race Organising Committee.

But then after a few hours, there's a good chance that the fleet will sail into a big high and wrestle with light westerlies. At least there's a 200-mile finger of favourable current parallel to the rhumb line to carry the fleet through the Gulf Stream.

If the fleet holds steady at 188 boats, this will be the third largest race in the 104-year, 46-race history of the 'Thrash to the Onion Patch', after the 265-boat turn-out in 2006 and 198 in 2008.

The only other time there were more than 180 entries was 2002. That turned out to be one of the wildest races in the history of the event, when another long finger of favourable current kicked up a brutal sea and pushed Roy Disney's Pyewacket to an elapsed time record for traditional fixed-keel boats of 53 hours, 29 minutes.

The 'Open' record is held by Hasso Plattner's 86-foot open yacht, Morning Glory, set in 2004 with a time of 48 hours 28 minutes 31 seconds – an average of 13.1 knots.

If the wind comes right, this year's race could again be one for the big boats.

The 99-foot Speedboat or 90-foot Rambler could have a shot at a new course record.

Behind them will be a pack of 60-70-footers like Bella Mente, which cleaned up at the New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta last weekend.

Another to watch is the English yacht Rán, which won both the 2009 Rolex Fastnet Race and Rolex Sydney-Hobart classics. Also in this group is Sir Geoffrey Mulcahy's Noonmark VI, on an extended circumnavigation to compete in the world's major races.

A sentimental favourite is Zwerver, a 56-foot wooden sloop with an eight-foot tiller that Olin Stephens (a member of the Bermuda Race Role of Honour) designed for a Dutch sailor in the 1950s.

If the wind is light, this should be a comfortable race. One crew has already announced that they hope to spend their off watches doing yoga and watching movies.

If the going is that placid, then all eyes will be on Peter Rebovich's much smaller Cal 40 Sinn Fein, going for a remarkable third straight win in the 104-boat St. David's Lighthouse Division, or her sistership, Gone with the Wind, from San Francisco Bay.