Sea Dubai manages ninth place in City of Gmunden Trophy

Dubai: A penalty at the downwind mark for Sea Dubai resulted in another close call with Team Aqua and put Sea Dubai in ninth place in the City of Gmunden Trophy race in the RC44 Austria Cup.

The race is not part of the championship ranking but gave valuable time at the helm for the team's new fleet race skipper, Harm Muller Spreer before the start of the fleet racing. Ceeref, with Igor Lah, came first followed by No Way Back and Pieter Heerema, BMW Oracle and Larry Ellison and the local Austrian team with Rene Mangold came fourth.

Most of the fleet hugged the coast in the light breeze and in the settled conditions the boats made a gentle parade towards the town to finish.

The RC44 class provides onboard hospitality and Sea Dubai was joined by two of its partners, Robert Stark, CEO of MarinePool and Chritian Hotz, Edox Swiss Watches, marketing director who both took the opportunity to sail with the team during the course of the day.

Preparations for the fleet racing took precedence in the early morning as the calm conditions gave the teams extra time onshore.

With two days of exhausting match races completed, Markus Wieser changed roles from skipper to tactician to begin the three days of fleet racing.

The fleet racing will run until tomorrow.