Forget everything you thought you knew about sailboat racing, the Extreme Sailing Series is the perfect antidote to distant and slow yacht confrontations! Bringing world-class close combat to the public since 2007, the Extreme 40 Sailing Series is back for another season with yet more great names and spectacular venues.

It's a sport, helming state-of-the-art multihulls on very demanding courses and the most respected skippers are lining up to just that, competing so fiercely that heart-stopping close encounters always feature on the menu. It's a show, and the public has full access to the action from the shore, in carefully chosen venues combining challenging sailing conditions and spectator-friendly configurations. It's a VIP experience, and "hot seats" are available onboard, a fifth man being able to join the four-man crew in order to get a firsthand experience and feel the excitement. Not willing to compromise, iShares Cup organisers OC Events have created a formula where serious competition and spectacle go hand in hand, the rapid success of the Extreme 40 series proving how well balanced the recipe is. In just two seasons, the iShares Cup has become a benchmark in the sailing world, steadily growing and attracting the biggest names in the sport whilst proving to be an extremely efficient partnership opportunity in these uncertain economic times.

Capable of reaching speeds usually reserved to motorboats even in medium wind conditions, the Extreme 40 has been designed by Olympic champions Yves Loday and Mitch Booth, with the aim to provide the international sailing arena with a visually stunning and 100% performance-focused multihull. Flying a hull in as little as 8 knots of breeze (15 kph), the 40-foot (12m) long carbon speed machine requires coordination, finesse but also sheer muscular power from the crews who battle it out on short courses during races that do not exceed 20 minutes - and there can be up to 8 of them per day! Tricky wind conditions combined with the level of competition inevitably lead to some spectacular crashes, capsizes and other hair-raising near miss as the 2008 season proved (read "Surviving the capsize" feature news)! Logistically, everything is put in place so that teams can resume racing as soon as possible should an incident occur, and the professionalism of shore teams are clearly comparable to that of Formula 1 squads operating in the pit zone. During the UK round of the 2008 iShares Cup in Cowes, a capsized boat was put back on its hulls so quickly that the crew was able to start the next race minutes later!


Read all about the venues in the EVENTS section of the website.