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The Wave, Muscat, Oman Air eye honours in Extreme series

PORTO — Omani entries continue to shine in the 2012 Extreme Sailing Series. Fresh from their thrilling victory in Istanbul, the Wave, Muscat kick off Act 4 in Porto with a four point advantage on the overall leaderboard while Oman Air are one point adrift from the podium.

At the end of their nerve-jangling encounter with Groupe Edmond de Rothschild in Act 3, The Wave, Muscat skipper Leigh McMillan said his crew were ‘getting better all the time’, a media release said on Wednesday.

“With each Act, we are seeing the benchmark set higher and higher with the racing getting closer and the competition becoming tighter and more stressful,” McMillan said.

“We have now won two Acts — in Qingdao and Istanbul — and came second behind Oman Air in the first Act in Muscat but if you look at the points for each one, you can see how incredibly close it has been.

“We had an excellent result in Istanbul but we can’t be complacent because this is our first time in Porto and there is every chance that one of the teams will get caught out by the conditions because it is really windy out in the Atlantic and the Douroriver will be the tiniest venue we have raced in with lots of crazy swirly winds. It will be the hardest venue we have raced in.”

One crew change has been announced for Act 4 with Bleddyn Mon taking over as fifth man from Rachel Williamson, adding extra weight for the windier conditions.

Morgan Larsson skipper of Oman Air, who has also made one change to his crew of Will Howden, Charlie Ogletree and Nasser Al Mashari by adding Andy Maloney to replace Max Bulger, will be hoping to post more podium places over the 29 races in Porto to nudge ahead of Red Bull Extreme Sailing who are one point ahead in third place on the leaderboard.

Said Nasser al Mashari: “We will be looking to get onto the podium in every race to move into the top three overall. The conditions will be different from Muscat and China but we are a very strong team and we will be trying as hard as possible to win. I’m really excited.”

The eight Extreme 40 teams will race over four days from July 5-8, with open water morning racing on the Atlantic followed by stadium style action each afternoon. It will be broadcast live online on the official event website www.extremesailingseries.com from 1800 CET (1700 local time) from the July 6^th-8^th.

The Extreme Sailing Series features some of the very best professional sailing teams in the world racecompeting in a fleet of identical Extreme 40 catamarans.

The action takes place on a mix of challenging race courses to deliver spectacular, stadium-style entertainment for the public.

The circuit visits Muscat (Oman), Qingdao (China), Istanbul (Turkey), Porto (Portugal), Cardiff (UK), Trapani (Italy), Nice (France) and finally Brazil starting in February until December 2012.

sports@khaleejtimes.com