Extreme Sailing Series - JP Morgan BAR drops to ninth

by Sarah Alexander on 23 Mar 2014 In Act 2 of the Extreme Sailing Series, the breeze picked up in Muscat for the final day of racing, with up to 26 knots testing all the teams. A burst hydraulics pipe, in the sixth race of the day forced the British team to retire, missing the final two races of the event and dropping them down to their ninth place position.

Tactician, Paul Goodison explained 'It was a tough day out there today. We sailed reasonably well for the first race then struggled a little bit with some of the situations we got into in the next few races, so things weren’t going great. Then we realised that we had a hydraulic problem, that got worse and worse to the point where we couldn’t pull the sails in.'

Despite an attempt to fix the problem by the shore team, J.P. Morgan BAR was unable to compete in the double point finale. A disappointed skipper, Ben Ainslie commented after racing 'It was a really tough day with the change of conditions and having to learn a whole new skill set in the boats. Unfortunately the gear failure really cost us the final two races and knocked us back in the overall standings so, that was very disappointing.

But during the event there has been a lot of positives; yesterday we really developed our light air sailing skills so we are moving forward but it’s a very difficult challenge in such a highly talented fleet. The fact that we are new to the class and because of the logistics we are unable to train - so effectively we are training through the series so that makes it challenging.'

The team will now move forward and look ahead to Act 3 in Qingdao, China in just over six weeks. It is a familiar venue for Olympic champions Ainslie, Goodison and Pippa Wilson, who each won a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.

Pippa Wilson concluded 'We have a few things to nail down for China, expecting it to be quite windy so potentially lots of drama and action! But really looking forward to the event and moving forward as team.'

The 2014 Extreme Sailing Series will continued with Act 3 taking place in Qingdao, China from first – 4th JP Morgan BAR