At long last .... sorry for the delay .... have been a few problems along the way.

One of those problems is still outstanding and is related to network delivery. This has had a knock on effect with relation to the Google Maps version - when it's sorted out - hopefully over the international break - a version for Maps will become available.

So in the meantime the Google Earth version comes in 2 flavours, (until said networking issues are resolved), a Simple file with no Models which is around 800K and a fatter file, 3.8Mb, with contains models of all the Boats etc.

The latter is - the Models' Sails, (with emblem etc), are orientated with your direction of travel and the Boat's even tilt depending on your current speed. (The models are positioned at the end of your last tack - not every one).

The smaller file is there for those who may have bandwidth issues - but if you're using GE anyway a few Mb more isn't going to hurt

As the both files will only be changed once a gameweek just download and save - then open in GE (saving to your My Places) rather than re-downloading when you want to look at the Race again.

There's a lot in there. All the initial route for all 7 Legs (with the relevant Waypoints and Waylines) + a breakdown of the Positions and Tracks for all 4 Pools (56 Boats).

For each Tack of the latest GW a Placemark appears on the Track at the start of the Tack in question and it's Pop-up contains all the information with respect to that Tack - The Player No, the Target Waypoint and it's Bearing, The Players, both Crew and Navigator (plus links to your FPL squad page for the weeks in question), their points, your Actual Bearing + distance travelled, the Status at the start and end of each tack (Racing, Run-Aground, Making repairs etc) plus other info deemed useful.

In future GWs a summary of all previous weeks will also be available inside your Boats folder.

Have a click around (clicking and dbl-clicking Placemarks to see what happens)

For anyone new to GE here's a basic interface guide found at the Google Earth Blog and Google's Guide - which is similar but more extensive. I'm happy to give assistance if you get really stuck.

Files for GW8 (Google Earth only at the moment as mentioned)

Simple

With Models

Gameweek 8 Progress.

With English Channel to negotiate this week it was expected that a few Boats would find themselves requiring repairs. This proved to be the case and with the various Atlantic Islands groups still to be navigated Leg 1 could well prove to be quite testing.

Now the Fleet is a week out of Portsmouth this is how they got on.

Pool A

After a sedate run to the first Waypoint all Crews were getting a feel for their Boats - but with that first marker passed a couple of Boats soon got themselves in trouble - A Smoked Cheese Pig running aground in Guernsey at the end of his 3rd Tack and The Doughboys suffering a similar fate on the north-western coast of France. Both Boats were however able to effect quick repairs and be back in the race - albeit with some ground to make up.

Naked Pirates must have sailed these waters before but can still consider himself lucky to have avoided any collisions of his own . After narrowly missing Cherbourg he sailed between Alderney and Guernsey, and then skimmed along the French coast before deciding that rejoining the main group was probably in his best interests.

Special Riders, Easy Beesy, CA Vellus Arsefield and Luke's Giants are leading the rest of the pack at this stage - but heading towards the Azores this may only be temporary.

Pool B

3 casualties within this Pool. Trigger Happy finding himself on the rocks a few miles west of Cherbourg, Trumpton Hotspur on the headland at Portland and Bullys Special Prize can consider himself extremely unlucky to have met with the same fate at Alderney - but only by a few metres

While Trumpton Hotspur managed to get himself back in the pack by the end of the week the others, along with luckysevens.co.uk, find themselves at the back at this early stage.

Out in front are Kazma United who has set a course for Madeira (must on liked Jonathan's holiday report ), followed closely by Crazy Canucks - with Y'all be Bad taking a more northerly route though close as far a distance goes. The remainder of the Pool are reasonably bunched

Pool C

Another Boat is providing the residents of Cherbourg with some amusement as Lokomotiv Croydon finds himself high and dry, and while Erins Own and Förbrytarbeteende IK go relatively close to the South Devon coast no harm is done.

Book 'Em Delgetti decided that changing course and running north across the paths of most of the group was a good idea. Unfortunately it turned out to be rather Scilly - leaving him trailing the rest of the Pool once he was back underway.

Halfway Up Virginia managed to make it all the way to Portugal on his final tack of the week but couldn't put on the brakes in time and will therefore begin GW9 in the repair yard.

Leading the field is Smoke City who just turned south in time to avoid Sao Miguel and Santa Maria in the Azores and with a final tack of nearly 500Nm is now just south of Madeira and heading towards the Canaries and the north west African coast. Will he alter direction in time?

The Drogs and Honeyballs are running in 2nd and 3rd with the rest of the group strung out fairly evenly behind them.

Pool D

Portland was again the destination of choice - this time for Whiz Bang Wallop - whiz bang wallop indeed . Cherbourg saw Apathetic Thistle pay a visit and Alderney's rocks lured yet another in The Wyld Ones. These 3 boats are bringing up the rear of the group after the first week at sea.

No-Eye Deer can consider himself fortunate not to be with them but changed tack just in time when getting rather too close to the north west coast of France.

After mysteriously heading off in the direction of America on tack 7 Lythgoe's Disciples managed to correct himself in time and now sees himself leading the Pool with Ardley Athletic in close pursuit. With Getafe King Life also having clear water between himself and the main pack they may feel reasonably comfortable. But with the multiple island groups between them and the Equator it's still anyone's race.

Up to 4 more weeks before the fleet arrives in Buenos Aires so there's a lot of sailing left yet.

Good work, I don't get what's going on, especially with the treck to America, but well done.

Oh no, I found this where I ran aground-



That translates as "Traditional Portuguese wreckers get ready to 'entertain' their new guest"

Awesome stuff Romyn, cheers for all the effort in this, it looks great in Google Earth

I had a tricky start, going backwards for a tack (presume that was Ingimarrsson's fault with -1 points?), but managed to turn the boat around and was doing well enough, until we hit some difficulty with our equipment and took a large detour west towards the 2nd waypoint! But at least i'm not as badly off as Halway Up Virginia who look like they're going for a spot of sunbathing on the Portuguese coast

I look forward to more updates

Just in case you missed it - you don't have to assume anything - all the info's in there - I'll use you query as a lead-in to explain the output a little.

When the GE file is first opened the tree-view in the left-hand pane will appear like this.



The first link, (FISO FPL Global Challenge), brings up a pop-up with the schedule etc.

The next set of folders is the Route Guide. This includes the Ports and all the Waypoints etc for each Leg. Only the current leg is selected by default - but you can switch as many in as you like. Expanding Leg1, say, gives



clicking any of the Waypoints gives an info pop-up like this one



Moving down to the Pools each one of these can be highlighted by selecting it - more info is available by drilling down. Taking your boat as an example - Robots in Disguise - Pool C expands to



The first icon in your group is your current position - dbl-clicking this flys you to your boat - and if you downloaded the version with models in it - these will appear.

The GW8 Tacks folder can also be expanded to show all the individual tacks that make-up your gameweek.



Clicking any of these will bring up the info for that tack. So using your Ingimarsson query - he was your 4th player so relates to tack 4 - and clicking that brings up



...which indeed shows it was him who caused you to go backwards. These pop-ups show everything related to the tack and are quite detailed. These can also be reached by clicking the placemarks in the map pane itself

And while I'm here - and just in case I need to whet anyone's appetite for going the GE route - here are screenshots of the 4 pools as they stand now.

Pool A - Pool B - Pool C - Pool D

Edit: Any boats seeming not to appear in the above pics are there - but may not appear as icons or names purely because of the Range I was at when I did the screen-shots. As you close in your names would appear. No one has sunk yet

This is a thing of beauty RomynPG. I'm impressed

I've been having fun on GEarth and have even been able to use this as evidence to prove to my girlfriend that there really is someone even geekier than me! Thank you!

Glad you like it

(what's this girlfriend thing )

astonishing RPG ! We are truly not worthy

agree 100%

Brilliant stuff RPG!

Mindblowing!

Awesome Stuff

10 out of 10 for effort and presentation. Go to the top of the class.

Happy with my progress so far, no doubt I will hit something big soon.

Keep up the excellent work.

Not many side comps come close to the imagination this one has, Romyn. Congrats mate! Great to see it get underway!

This rocks!

Absolutely amazing!

(Although totally baffling )

I think I need a new computer. Who would have thought a P800 would struggle to run Google Earth, Firefox and IE at the same time?

Great work though RPG.

This is mental ! Well Done Rom -

First tack i checked had Crew Tevez Navigator Teale Surreal

Like others i'm not sure how i'm moving along but know that i'm heading south in a zig zag fashion

Glad to see that my team of fish finger eaters have managed to repair my boat and get us back on the open seas.

Aye aye captain.....

cheers for that explanation above, another handy feature

Quick question, is there a way to view all four pools at once? Or maybe just the leaders from each pool to compare.

could you explain that again please??

I'm kidding, that's excellent, what makes it even better is im up there with the front runners and plenty of rum on board, i've promised the lads some wenches when we next make port if we stay ahead

There is - but it's a bit busy

(Bare in mind that each Pool is like a mini-race in itself - with points being awarded at the end of each Leg based on a boats position/result within their Pool - not the entire fleet. At the start of each Leg the Pool membership is randomised afresh.)

To see them all at once though what you can do is select each Pool in turn and right-click the Pool Name. One of the options presented is Save As. This allows you save each Pool as a separate kmz file (kmz is one of the extensions GE used/is associated with).

This would then give you 4 new kmz files, Pool A...Pool D. You can then load all of those files at once and select them all. Only takes a few secs and will give you what you want.

Thanks for the encouraging comments as well - pleased that you like the idea.

I noticed a couple of presentation issues which I will fix before the next update. They're related to non-racing statuses (like repairs) where the distance traveled is 0 Nms and the Nav errors aren't right. It has no effect on anything as they're not used anyway in those circumstances and they should also be zero but they're not - they're being carried over inside the code. Surprised no one noticed

Bloody brilliant, had to wait until i got to work to look at it properly
Are the emblems mean't to be on the spinneker or not , my boat has Smoke City on the stern though

WOW!!!

Top marks for an amazing effort!

Not being a sailor I'm not sure exactly what the sails are called - and even after a search around I'm still not 100%. However I believe the boats used have a Mainsail (the one behind the mast) and either a Genoa or Jib ? as the Headsail (the one infront of the mast). The model I used didn't have a spinnaker - but it's something I want to add if I can.

As well as the name-plate on the stern all boats should also show the emblem on the headsail - and Stoke City looks this - or it does for me - don't you, or any others for that matter, not see it as I do?

My boat Smoke City, purple hull and has grey sails with no emblem (that's how i see it) if you zoom in you can read Smoke City on the back, don't mind at all though, perhaps i'm using an older version of GE as it was already on my work computer

Can see my logo ok, but that might be because the Portuguese wreckers have tied me to the mast.

Weather lovely. Wish you were here with sun block, Prep H and a ticket for the Benfica game on 24th

This from the BBC:

Trouble Aboard the SS Cakes

By Franklin Cole

In the just-started Global Challenge, Cakes North End FC manager Johnathan Cakes had promised the supporters that he would "Bring them at least one trophy this year, and through sailing we just might do it, because quite frankly, we smoke turds on the pitch."

Think again.

Captain Ross Wallace drank a little too much JD on the way out of Pompey and decided to take the crew over to Dublin for this weekend's Euro 2008 qualifier with Deutscheland.

"I thought I could trust 'ole Rossy," said Mr. Cakes. "He promised me he would save the hard alcohol for the most dire of medical needs only, such as Ronaldo's gash from a week ago. He fell off the wagon, though."

Reports have been circulating that while the rest of the crew slept, including well-known night owl Marcus Hahnemann, Captain Wallace popped open a bottle of his favorite Tennessee whiskey and guzzled it like one would a gallon of milk after stuffing 10 Oreo cookies into one's mouth. Then, the drunken steward pulled a "Dumb and Dumber" and steered the ship back towards Ireland instead of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"We're very upset," said an unnamed crew member who had quite a heavy Portugese accent. "I wanted to try out for Boca Juniors, because the idiot manager of Cakes North End FC keeps buying players of total poop quality, like Dave Kitson and Chuck Tevez. What am I to do now?"

"I have no comment," said Mr. Cakes when hearing of these quotes. "I have some very important scouting trips to take while the lads are sailing. I'll deal with insubordination when they return."

Unfortunately for loyal visitors to Cakesburton Grove, they won't be bringing any trophies with them.

This "wagon" your crew members are falling off, has it got anything to do with this "bandwagon" I've heard so much about?