Extreme 40 Racing in Muskat

I asked Ewan McEwan, the chief umpire for the Extreme 40-event in Muskat, to send me some remarks for LTW about how it is going. He wrote back:

Dear Jos,

Here is some text for you:
The closing speeds are horrendous!  Its very much like umpiring team racing; just when you think the race is settled all the boats concertina together at the marks and its all full-on again!  A couple of mark situations are unusual, we had one yesterday, Thursday; Yellow approaching a windward mark with starboard rounding on lay-line.  
Brown and Grey, overlapped, approaching on collision course on the port lay-line with Blue on the same course some four boat lengths astern.
Yellow crosses in front of Brown and Grey and tacks above them, completing on port tack in the zone.  Blue can easily avoid becoming overlapped inside except that then Yellow bears away to round the mark she creates the overlap on Blue who cannot avoid getting this overlap and is therefore entitled to mark-room under RRS 18.3 as modified by Addendum Q (similar to the change of RRS 18.3 using in match racing RRS Appendix C).
Of course this particular situation is unique to fleet racing, as opposed to match racing, as normally Yellow would tack in the face of Blue and in this case would have been well ahead as they bore-away.

http://www.extremesailingseriesasia.com/

Another fairly unique aspect of Extreme 40 umpiring is that often port tackers will slow down to wait for starboard tackers to pass and then 'pull-the-trigger' - accelerating very quickly from almost stopped to full speed.  We have found some interesting situations result if the waiting port tack boats  'pull-the-trigger' a little too early and cause the tacking (old starboard) boat problems as they complete ahead with RRS 15 - the multi-hulls take so long to tack, and the newly clear- astern boat is on top of them very quickly.
Today, Friday, the wind is very strong and the format of competition will likely be 'speed-sailing' in pairs.  I am sure this will create  another set of unusual aspects!

Hope this is of some interest?
Cheers, Ewan



According to this and the press-releases from the Event-series Website it is certainly going fast with these big Cats. Something we will no doubt also see with the (Even More) Extreme Americas Cup Yachts.
Extreme Sailing Series Asia Mediapage’