A rough 1st Day at the Extreme Sailing Series for TeamAus. Brett Gibson

No amount of training can set a fresh team up for immediate success. Like in any sport, Match Fitness is what it’s about and while hopes can be high for the start of a new season reality is a green field approach requires patience.

Act 1:Day 1 – Singapore

A couple of solid races first up saw GAC-Pindar TeamAus setup nicely in the top half of the fleet. A 6th and a 4th showed they can compete well. Especially in race one where the race tracker showed they slipped to last in Race 1.

As the races progressed the more experienced crews started to rise through the fleet with the likes of Dean Barker’s Emirates team New Zealand, Ben Ainslie’s BAR

In this format of racing it isn’t lowest points as often the fleet sizes fluctuate from location to location. To gain more than 1 point per race you need to finish 9th or above. 10th, 11th and 12th only bags one point. Dean Barker and Ben Ainslie might have won 2 races each – but inconsistency cost them also. Consistency is the name of the game – not Bullets. Of the top three boats only the French boat Groupama, skippered by Franck Cammas, won a race.

Race 6 saw plenty of drama for GAC Pindar as they clashed with last years series winner The Wave, Muscat skippered by Leigh McMillan. These boats are tough and GAC Pindar was able to finish races 7 and 8 with some fairly significant damage to their Port hull