Lightning threat puts a stop to vital practice day

On Friday 13th, it was tempting fate to push the fleet of 13 boats on to Auckland Harbour for a day of practice racing. With so few practice days on the season schedule, canning a day of sailing is a big deal. But with the threat of lightning in the afternoon, and the thought of those tall and highly conductive carbon-fibre rigs pointing towards the unpredictable heavens, the practice racing was called off. 

However, three boats were still allowed out for a quick test sail before the lightning arrived.

After their severe breakages from the Perth weekend a month earlier, it was no surprise to see Spain and New Zealand head out on to the water to make sure their F50s were properly ship-shape again. The more surprising third boat was Germany. Apparently, after the shock breakage of the Spanish daggerboard box during Perth training, the SailGP tech team decided to carry out some NDT testing on the rest of the fleet. 

The German boat showed some possible weaknesses so there was a ‘yaw block’ replacement. No? Me neither, so I asked. The yaw block sits inside a carbon bracket. It is adjusted inboard and outboard to change the "yaw" angle of the foil, a bit like tuning the tyre on a racing car.

The Foil’s Freddie Carr caught up with Dylan Fletcher, who maybe was not so sad about the lack of practice time. After all, if you’re already top of the tree, chances are you know more than some of the others chasing you. 

“A bit anticlimactic to be honest,” said the Emirates GBR driver. “Unfortunately there's going to be some thunderstorms this afternoon so in order to keep the boat safe at the weekend we're obviously not sailing, but we'll be raring to go for tomorrow.”

It’s looking like a fruity forecast for the weekend, with a lot of breeze from the south, which means it will be a very short race track in the confines of Auckland Harbour. “Yeah I'm not gonna lie,” grinned Fletcher. “When we saw the forecast for the weekend I did have a smile on my face. We all love sailing these boats when it's windy and especially being in Auckland. Maybe the crowds don’t get behind us, but it’s a big 10,000 seater and we're just looking forward to getting racing on this little race course.”

Even when there’s no sailing, the teams are looking to maximise their time together. The SailGP simulator was running hot all day, with each of the 13 teams allocated just 30 precious minutes of training time. So there will be a lot of excitement about some of the recent announcements that have been pouring out in recent days.

The new Pensacola training base in Florida means that from September there will be an F50 for the teams to train on in between events, and to help get new sailors with no SailGP experience up to speed with how to handle these beasts.

And Russell Coutts confirming that there will at some point be a ‘minor league’ in SailGP. “I think [SailGP managing director] Andy Thompson let the cat out of the bag,” quipped Coutts at the press conference on Friday morning. “We are looking at a smaller catamaran, probably 25 to 30 feet long. As you look at other professional sports leagues, clearly there's a challenge in training new athletes.

“We think there's a model similar to some of the other minor leagues and professional sports; that we could develop a product that allows youth athletes from all over the world to actually come and develop their skills. And then be drafted, effectively into the top professional teams in the world. I think that's a hugely exciting pathway going forward.”

There’s no time scale on this yet. Indeed it seemed like Coutts was designing the minor league as the words were tumbling out of his mouth. But it’s a hugely exciting aspiration that - after creating the most dynamic league at the top of the sport - now Coutts is looking to span the huge chasm between SailGP and the lower levels of the sailing universe.