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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Oman Air confident of finishing ESS season on a high note

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MUSCAT: The crew of Oman Air go into the concluding Extreme Sailing Series event confident they can wrap-up the 2017 season on a high note.


With double points on offer at the finale in Los Cabos, Mexico, the experienced team also know that the destination of the Extreme Sailing Series title could go down to the wire. Phil Robertson’s Oman Air crew of Pete Greenhalgh, Ed Smyth, James Wierzbowski and Nasser al Mashari, sit in second place on the overall series leaderboard, five points behind the on-form Danish-flagged SAP team and a point ahead of the Swiss defending champions Alinghi. They will be aiming to bounce back from what was, by their own high standards, a disappointing performance at the last Act in San Diego which saw them finish off the podium in fourth place for the first time in 2017.


While aware of the scale of the task ahead, the Oman Air team know that yacht racing is an inherently unpredictable affair. At the same time, Los Cabos is a new venue for the Extreme Sailing Series so the race course at the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula is likely to add even more uncertainty to the mix. “We pretty much aim to go out there, do the very best that we can and see how the dice fall,” said Greenhalgh, Oman Air’s veteran tactician and mainsail trimmer.


“The double points on offer do open things up. SAP needs to be fourth and we need to win the event to take the series — and as we know, fourth places are possible for the top runners, Alinghi even had a sixth place in Hamburg, so anything is possible.”


Bowman Al Mashari is also keen to finish the long Extreme Sailing Series season with a successful flourish. Now a veteran of the high-speed foiling GC32 catamaran circuit, he said: “We sailed the boat well in San Diego and we also know where we made some mistakes. So we can come to Mexico and make a few adjustments and we will be right back in there at the front of the fleet. I am confident we can do that. We won back-to-back Acts in the middle of the year in Barcelona and Hamburg, so we know we can repeat that success in Los Cabos.”


Outside the top three, Austria’s Red Bull Racing Team are out of overall contention in fourth place but are still eyeing a podium place for the season. At the bottom of the leaderboard NZ Extreme Sailing Team and Land Rover BAR Academy both have a point to prove. In Los Cabos the six regular Extreme Sailing Series teams are joined again by the US-flagged team, Lupe Tortilla Demetrio, and another wildcard entry in the shape of Team Extreme Mexico, with a mixed Mexican-British crew line-up headed by experienced local racer Erik Brockmann, a national 49er and 420 champion.


Racing at the ESS finale starts on November 30 and concludes on December 3.


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