MATCH RACING EXTREME 40 STYLE

Check out the Extreme match-racing action from Muscat last week - double Olympic Gold Medallist Shirley Robertson takes on Youth World Match Racing Silver Medallist Paul Campbell-James. DOWNLOAD THE HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO FOR THE MATCH RACING AT MUSCAT BELOW (84.5MB) No match racing in Valencia on Monday, but multihulls have been match racing recently!

Check out the action in Muscat last week when double Olympic Gold Medallist Shirley Robertson (Rumbo Almería) faced up against World Match Racing Youth Championship silver medallist Paul Campbell-James (The Wave, Muscat) in two Extreme 40s at the final event of the Extreme Sailing Series Asia.

The fleet of six boats in Muscat spent an afternoon match racing - a new addition to the usual short - course Extreme 40 fleet racing format. With the teams racing metres from the shoreline and with commentary throughout the afternoon by Olympic silver medallist Mark Covell, the crowds, most of whom were watching sailing for the first time, were entertained and excited by the easy to understand, head to head racing.
Ian Walker, onboard Rumbo Almería gave us his thoughts: "It was very interesting. Having skippered and been a tactician in the America's Cup, I was interested to see how it would work in catamarans, particularly with the America's Cup being in multihulls this time. I actually think it can work. We don't get that many passing manoeuvres anyway in the slower, heavier boats and what we saw was a real premium boat handling. But the most important thing is setting the course so the boats can split at the leeward mark. If it was a one way track, it wouldn't work. But it was an excellent course and there was a lot of over-taking, from what we saw in these conditions and these boats, I think thumbs up.

Here's to more wind in Valencia tomorrow and Mr Ellison's prediction "It should be quite a spectacle of extreme sailing" will hopefully come true. If not ... hold out for the start of the Extreme Sailing Series Europe in May - it promises to be a spectacular series.

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See also a LTW-blogpost with some notes from CU Ewan McEwan: Extreme 40 racing in Muskat