Double barrelled

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With a sail area the size of a tennis court, the Extreme 40 hulls fly in just eight knots of wind. (iShares Cup)

The opening salvos have been fired in the world's most competitive sailing series.

When the first Volvo Extreme 40s hit the water in 2005, the class was seen as the VX70's boisterous little brother, tagging along with the bigger boats on the '05-06 Volvo Ocean Race for the ride of their lives.

Designed by Yves Loday and created by Mitch Booth, together with Volvo Ocean Race Extreme 40 skipper Herbert Dercksen, the mid-sized catamarans were designed to offer fast and exciting inshore racing, but also to be cost-effective to run and transport, fitting inside a 40ft shipping container.

The lightweight full-carbon fibre boats reach speeds of over 35 knots on flat water and, thanks to a total sail area that's bigger than a tennis court, fly a hull in as little as eight knots.

Travelling to the Volvo stopover ports of Sanxenxo, Rio de Janeiro, Baltimore, Portsmouth and Rotterdam, the VX40s proved a big hit with the crowds, providing fast and fun spectator sport while the tougher ocean going fleet - and their crews - rested in port. After seven months and 80 races, the series was closely fought - determined in its last race, when Tommy Hilfiger snatched the title.

OC Events and Tornado Sport launched the Extreme 40 Sailing Series in late 2006, giving the class a platform to compete annually on a European circuit. This was given a huge boost when iShares, a world leader in exchange traded funds, signed up as title sponsor to the series: the iShares Cup.

Now, less than four years since its creation, the Extreme 40 fleet is the inshore class to be sailing in. Fourteen boats have been built to date, and, with a hard hitting crew list of Olympic and America's Cup veterans, the class offers a heady dose of glamour that's already drawn tens of thousands of visitors to race villages across Europe this summer.

The perceived level of competition is so high that the Extreme 40s are now being used by America's Cup teams as a training platform for the controversial 2009 Cup, which will be raced on multi-hulls.

The Middle-East is represented for the first time this year by two teams; the Oman Sail Challenge, a brand new team backed by the Sultanate of Oman and Chris Bake's Team Aqua.

The Oman team is part of a larger project to re-ignite the country's maritime heritage and to promote it as a world-class sailing destination in advance of the 2010 International Festival of the Sea, to be held in Muscat.

The team is skippered by British sailor Pete Cummings and helmed by Olympic medallist Chris Draper, who has moved into the fleet from the high performance 49er skiff class.  ‘It's exactly the kind or racing that I love; real crash and burn stuff," Draper said, "I'm massively excited about the quality of sailors we're racing against, but we've got a good team."

Oman Sail Challenge began the series with a crew of international pro sailors, but will include an increasing presence of Omani nationals as the campaign progresses.

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