(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) The second day of Act 6 of the 2014 Extreme Sailing Series (ESS) in Istanbul Turkey went to the two Oman Sail teams with Oman Air clocking up more points then any other boat to climb by four places on the leaderboard and finish in third place on Friday.
Oman Air's best day of the season couldn't be matched by its stablemate and defending champion The Wave Muscat despite an impressive show by Leigh McMillan and his crew that ensured their stay at the top followed by Emirates Team New Zealand in second place.
On what turned out to be a day of the underdogs GAC Pindar was the quickest boat off the start line taking a creditable fourth-place finish. Oman Air's skipper Rob Greenhalgh who won the inaugural ESS in 2007 was thrilled with his team's performance.
'We had a really good day today. We made some good improvements on our speed. We made just a few little changes to the boat set-up which made a big difference. We started well and got some good results out of it. We're really happy with what we did today but there are still two days left.'
Greenhalgh's teammate Musab al Hadi said 'We are third and are having a really good battle with The Wave Muscat which is fun. We are looking forward to the next two days.'
Although The Wave Muscat is on top of the leaderboard its crew is not taking the rest of Act 6 lightly.
Its tactician and double Olympic champion Sarah Ayton said 'It's really close and a lot of teams have improved their game. So it isn't going to be over until that final race on Sunday. But today we had a good day out. We approached it with high energy; it was a case of doing the basics well. Overall we are in a good shape. We're focusing on the tempo on the boat getting good starts and all of those things we've been working on throughout the year are gelling together.'
It was a physically demanding day for the fleet with eight races taking place in a breeze that rose to 18 knots making manoeuvres and decisions during the starts and windward-leeward legs critical.
Both Alinghi and Groupama were back in the water on Friday with new rigs after breaking their masts in isolated incidents during Thursday's racing.
Standings [after Day 2]:
1 The Wave Muscat (95 pts) 2 Emirates Team New Zealand (92) 3 Oman Air (87) 4 GAC Pindar (75) 5 SAP Extreme Sailing Team (74) 6 Alinghi (70) 7 Red Bull Sailing Team (68) 8 Gazprom Team Russia (66) 9 JP Morgan BAR (65) 10 TeamTurx (56) 11 Realteam (54) 12 Groupama Sailing Team (48).
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