With just one day left for Act 5 of the Extreme Sailing Series held in the United Kingdom, Oman Sail’s The Wave, Muscat boat leapfrogged rivals Alinghi to go into pole position while Oman Air claimed another outright win to boost their campaign for a series best finish. A lack of wind in the third day reduced the programme in Cardiff Bay to just five races but defending Extreme champion Leigh McMillan and his crew of Nasser Al Mashari, Pete Greenhalgh, Sarah Ayton and Kinley Fowler stayed patient and focussed and added another two podium places to their impressive tally. These vital points nudged them higher up the leaderboard and eventually to the top, giving them a slender seven point cushion over Alinghi going into the last day which is expected to be wet and windy.
Consistency once again proved key and it helped that sparring partners Alinghi were unusually slow in finding form, McMillan said afterwards. “We weren’t winning any of the races but we were putting in some good performances, making some good gains and working well as a team which was all we could do,” he said. “Our main rivals had a worse day than us though not by much but it meant we jumped into the lead. “Tomorrow is difficult to forecast but we shall treat it like every other day and be ready for anything but this is the first time all season that we have gone into the final day in the lead so we are pretty happy about that.”
Rob Greenhalgh and his Oman Air crew of Hashim Al Rashdi, Musab Al Hadi, Kyle Langford and Ted Hackney are still to crack the consistency code. They mixed a resounding win with a couple of mid-fleet and ‘bringing up the rear’ results, typical of a newly-formed team finding its feet in a very tough fleet.
There was plenty to work with, said Al Hadi and the good results are a motivation for raising the bar, to finish in fifth position which would be their best result of the series so far, with a sixth in Qingdao the performance to beat. “It wasn’t as consistent as we would have liked,” he said. “We had a first and a last and a few mid-fleet results, but it was good when we were able to turn things around. Hopefully tomorrow, we will get more breeze and we can smash it.”
The Extreme fleet have now completed 25 races so far in Cardiff Bay, where the Extreme 40 fleet action is staged close to shore, providing a superb viewing platform for “Stadium Racing”. In addition, there is live music, street and open-air theatre, children’s entertainment and sporting and food events since Act 5 is one of the highlights of the 2014 Cardiff Harbour Festival.
