Extreme Sailing Series - Light an tricky first day for JP Morgan BAR

by Sarah Alexander on 20 Mar 2014 Act 2’s opening day of the Extreme Sailing Series brought light and tricky racing for Britain’s J.P. Morgan BAR and the 11 Extreme 40 sailing teams. The team, led by Ben Ainslie, collected a mixed bag of results throughout the day as they tried to master the unpredictable sea breeze off the Arabian Peninsula.

Finishes in the bottom three were followed up by two-second places, but overall the team were content with their results as, across the board all the teams were delivering inconsistent finishes. Reflecting on their first day and only their fifth time racing together as team, Tactician, Paul Goodison commented, 'It was a bit of a mixed bag today, some of the races we did quite well in, some of the races we got caught in the middle of the pack and always seem to come out at the back end which was very frustrating.

We still need to sharpen up going round the corners and with some of the tacks and gybes but I guess all in all some reasonable positives to come out of our first day.'

Bowman, Matt Cornwall continued 'Overall it was quite hard to get a handle on it - everyone is kind of going the same speed, everyone seems to be doing pretty well then having a bad race. We feel a little frustrated as we struggled to get a real grip on the day but we know a couple of things we can improve on, so that will be a focus tomorrow and we recognize what we did well so we will keep those going.

Goodison concluded 'When we were at the front we managed to stay there a couple of times so moving forward we know what we can learn from so it’s a case of debriefing and looking at some videos tonight, seeing how we can get better and ready to go again tomorrow.'

The team finishes the day in eighth place with 32 points, one point behind local team, Oman Air and seven ahead of Gazprom Team Russia. Racing continues from 14.00 local time on Thursday 20th JP Morgan BAR website