Strong start: Sea Dubai in third spot

Dubai : A noteworthy start for Team Sea Dubai after a 90-minute delay waiting for the wind to fill in put the home team in the lead for the first fleet race of the Sea Dubai RC44 Gold Cup and earned them a very decisive win.

With a flat sea and a breeze showing potential, the home team led the fleet all the way to the finish, rewarding Stuart Priestly, manager of Emirates Group Sponsorships with a grand display of the distinctive Fly Emirates spinnaker as they passed him close to the finish line.

Too eager at the start of the next race, Sea Dubai crossed the line too early and were forced to dip below the start mark as a penalty but they caught up well and finished fifth behind Organika.

The winner of the race was Team Austria who had an excellent race finishing first ahead of Artemis and No Way Back.

Team Aqua claw back

The sausage shaped course, took the boats up wind and out to sea alongside the crescent of the Palm to round the windward mark and then downwind towards the coast.

There were better fortunes for Team Aqua too in the third race and, after a bad day yesterday and ninth- and seventh-place finishes today, they finished second after overtaking No Way Back and then Sea Dubai in a tight tussle at the finish on the final downwind leg. Sea Dubai came a commendable third with No Way Back on their tail.

"We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do well here on our home ground," said Markus Wieser. "Each race has its own pressures and here in Dubai we are really conscious of our performance in the usual way but also in another way with local expectations and we are pushing ourselves hard. We were disappointed with our performance yesterday but today is much better," he added.

After two great results, race four dented the team's spirits as it finished in tenth place. A bad start and wrong decisions forced them towards the back of the fleet and in dying winds they finished last, but they achieved a third place at the end of the day.

The long-distance race will start at 11.00 tomorrow.

Results

1st Artemis Torbjorn Tornqvist/Dean Barker

2nd No Way Back Poeter Heerema/Ray Davis

3rd Sea Dubai DIMC Yousef Lahej/Markus Wieser

4th Team Aqua Chris Bake/Cameron Appleton

5th Islas Canarias Puerto Calero

6th Katusha Bob Little/Paul Cayard

7th Organika Maciej Nawrocki/Karol Jablonski

8th Team Austria Rene Mangold/Christian Binder

9th BMW Oracle Neville Crichton/Morgan Larson

10th Ceeref Igor Lah/Rod Davis