GC32 Racing Tour – Sultanate of Oman bowled over by German enthusiasm

by Oman Sail on 2 Aug 2015

Kiel Cup - 2015 Bullitt GC32 Racing Tour Sander van der Borch / Bullitt GC32 Racing Tour

GC32 Sailing Cup Kiel has proved to be one of their most challenging events this year but the crew on Oman Sail’s GC32 Sultanate of Oman held on to third place overall in the Bullitt GC32 Racing Tour in Germany on Saturday with one day to go.

The narrow Kieler Fjorde might be a brand new racing venue for the GCs but the German crowds are showing their support by turning up in their thousands, following at close quarters and clearly eager to watch these high performance machines tear around the tiny race track at astonishing speeds.

So far crowd numbers are among the highest recorded at a GC32 event and their enthusiasm is going a long way to offsetting some of the frustrations felt by Sultanate of Oman skipper Leigh McMillan in their fight for honours which today earned them one outright win and another podium place.

A morning where there was no wind and no racing was followed by an afternoon of fresh breeze and plenty of exciting action giving spectators a dramatic exhibition of high speed racing with the GC32s skimming across the water on their foils.

By the close, Sultanate of Oman were holding steady in third place but McMillan was ruing missed opportunities.

“Things didn’t really go our way today because we were getting good starts and not managing to convert them into good results,” said McMillan.

“We need just a bit more practice as a team!” he said referring to a last minute change of crew when Pete Greenhalgh became ill and Paul Campbell James, who stood in for Leigh at the end of the Cowes Cup and for the Round the Island Race, stepped in again for the Kiel Sailing Cup.

“To win in this fleet you need to nail all aspects of the racing – you have to get absolutely everything in place. We are scratching our heads a bit, especially upwind and even when we were happy with our strategies and everything was going OK, a boat would come up from behind in a puff of wind, on their foils and engulf us so it was pretty frustrating.”

“Having said that these boats are incredibly fun to sail – and having enough wind to get up on the foils was great but we want to go out and win.

“We know we can do it because we won overall in Austria and put in some great performances in Cowes but we have to work harder on our starts and on strategy. We will talk about it tonight and find a way because we are determined to rise up through the ranks and we have just a day left to do it.”

McMillan’s crew of Paul Campbell James, Ed Smyth, Nasser Al Mashari and Alister Richardson were blown away by the support they received from the German crowds.

“We are used to racing in front of good crowds in the Extreme 40 and GC32 circuits but the spectators in Kiel were fantastic,” said Al Mashari.

“We could hear them cheering and clapping and it seems like they really enjoyed watching these boats in action.”

Overall results