Oman Sail’s team Masirah, the Extreme Sailing Series Europe iShares cup champion last year, has finished the final day of the Muscat stage of the Extreme Sailing Series Asia in third place (first place overall in the Muscat stage), which adds six points atop it’s original 12 at the begging of the stage to give it a 7 point lead on Team China, and granting it the champion of the series title for the Extreme Sailing Series Asia. This means that Masirah is now the champion for both the European & Asia versions of Extreme Sailing Series.

The team suffered low positions and bad results in the first two days of the Muscat leg but managed a comeback and maintained good results, especially in day four,  to finish first place in Muscat. The final day saw Masirah, in encouragingly windy environment, battle with Team China for the final points for both the day, stage, and championship. The team managed to finish first twice, in the second and third races of the day, with Team China grabbing equally important second place finishes on both, but while Team China finished Muscat in it’s favour, the championship finished to Masirah’s.

The Wave, the other Oman Sail team, grabbed second place in Muscat, and maintained a high and steady position in the leader boards throughout the five days of racing. A second place in Muscat also grants them an overall second place in the championship with a shared 11 points with Team China. Well done to them.

Congratulations to the Oman Sail team : (Masirah) Pete Cumming, Leigh McMillan, Mark Bulkely, Nasser Al Mashari. (The Wave) Paul Campbell-Jones, Allistar Richardson, Greg Homman, & Khamis Al-Anbouri

More details, pictures, and final leaderboards when available.

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Red Bull Extreme Sailing has maintained it’s lead on the leaderboards on day 2 of the Muscat leg of the Extreme Sailing Series Asia. Grabbing first place once, second three times, and a lonely last in the six courses of day 2 has once again put them provisionally on the top of overall leaderboard with 47 points.

Six points behind, is The Wave, Oman who managed to grab first place twice and repalce Team China as second place on the leaderboards. No such luck however, can be said for the current event leader Masirah who have only managed a 2nd place in the last course.

Masirah, previously hoping for a hattrick clean sweep after Hong Kong & Singapore, will now surely not disregard Red Bull a threat given their come back in Singapore from the disappointing racing in Hong Kong.

The team had started well, but a penalty early in the day sent their luck tripping for it’s remainder. Agreeably, an altogether more upbeat day with more shift and slides in the leaderboard. We remain hopeful for a Masirah comeback on day 3.

Best of luck to our boys.

More pictures & provisional leader board after the break

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The Sohar Philatelic & Numismatic Exhibition is all set to launch later today in the Safeer Mall, Sohar udner the auspices of Sayyid Mohammed bin Sultan Al-Busaidi, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior.

The exhibition will include a demonstrative exhibit which Oman Post, as well as similar societes from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar Kuwait and the Emirates will take part of. The exhibition will also include a symposium due to take place tomorrow (Wednesday, 3/2) and a public auction of stamps, notes and other items of interest due to take place on Thursday (4/2)

The exhibiton’s website was launched yesterday and has comprehensively all details about the events, the exhibits and the organization. Sadly, it’s currently only available in Arabic.

Do check it out.

The Jewel Of Muscat, a project we talked about during launch back in October, has now set course bound to Singapore. The journey, part of a multi-lateral plan to increase cooperations between the two countries.

The project, inspired by the Belitung Tang Shipwreck,  is the fruit of an idea of reconstructing a 9th century style Arabic dhow similar to those used by Omani sailors throughout history. Work on the project began on January 2008 where since it has undergone numerous developments until yesterday’s landmark one, which coincided with the first day of the Muscat stage of the Extreme Sailing Series Asia.

Captain Saleh bin Said Al Jabri of Shabab Oman expertise, will be commanding the ship to Singapore stopping on the way in India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia in a voyage expected to take 4 months.

True to it’s form, the voyage will attempt authentic replication of what the 9th century ship experience would have been. The contrsuction, for example, is completely without nails and instead uses construction mechanisms available during the 9th century. The journey will also rely only on the navigational techniques and tools available at the time.

Progress of the journey will be available on the Jewel Of Muscat website, and through a twitter account they will be using (@jewelofmuscat). The website has a multitude of resources and information about the project, as well as a number of photos and video of the development of the project.

We will be posting developments as they come.

More photos after the break.

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The fourth and final round of Extreme Sailing Series of Asia kicked off yesterday in The Wave, Muscat. The event, the first of it’s type and caliber in the Sultanate provided novel conditions for the teams to race in. Slower than the Hong Kong and Singapore stages, the practice runs and the first day proved Muscat challenging off the line, and tested the team’s strategies and brains rather than muscle and grip.

The first day, dubbed slow and hard, ended with Team Red Bull leading the score board with two firsts, and two seconds across the four-course lines, tailed by seven points by both China Team and The Wave, Muscat.

The other Omani team, winner of the Singapore, and Hong Kong stages, and current series leader with 121 points, Masirah finished at fifth position. Skipper, Pete Cumming, remains hopeful for today’s (day 2) stage.

The tournmanet is held everyday all-day until the final day on the 5th of February. Do go out and support The Wave and Masirah in the The Wave project.

After the break, current standings and pictures.

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