Perth review: Season 6 kicks off as Perth stakes claim as SailGP's best venue

Perth has immediately established itself as one of the best venues that SailGP could ever hope to visit. When so much time, money and effort is involved in taking the bandwagon around the world, you want to know that when you get there, the conditions are going to deliver. Nothing in life is ever guaranteed, and certainly not a weather forecast.

But the Fremantle Doctor is one of the most reliable phenomena known to the sailing world, going all the way back to that classic America’s Cup regatta in 1987. The Doctor delivered all that was expected – and possibly a little more in the brutal training days leading up to the racing weekend.

As if Abu Dhabi already looks like a dubious destination for the climax of the season, the drama of Perth has thrown the light winds of the Middle East even further into relief. Thanks to an intriguing grand final last November in Abu Dhabi, it feels like SailGP dodged a bullet, whereas in Perth the forecast of a thrilling weekend came pretty much with a cast-iron guarantee. 

It’s a trade-off between ultimate drama and excitement for the spectators – both live and online – and the necessity of making sure the league can still pay its way. Way above my pay grade to tell SailGP where to put its eggs, but from a sailing fan’s perspective I’m not sure any of the other 12 venues in 2026 will cap the lively conditions and blue sky and water of Fremantle.

In The Foil’s Season 6 preview podcast, I predicted that the teams to beat would be those that made minimal changes to the key positions on board. But then Spain’s boat broke during training while New Zealand broke their own boat in that collision with Switzerland. So that immediately puts two of my season favourites on the back foot.

This left the way for three other top teams to stamp their authority on the season. All three of the finalists were sailing with new wing trimmers – albeit all with a great pedigree: Leigh McMillan joining France, Glenn Ashby doing a late stand-in for the injured Iain ‘Goobs’ Jensen for Australia, and Stu Bithell in his weekend of competition with Great Britain.

The British had an OK day on Saturday, although by skipper Dylan Fletcher’s admission they couldn’t really get out of their own way at times.  “We really got caught up in ourselves and didn't really quite execute at the start or at the bottom gate, but today [Sunday] it felt like we could just stretch our legs.”

On Sunday the British showed a great ability to bounce back from average starts to find a way through the traffic. “We discussed slowing up coming into the bottom gate and losing metres here and there, but giving ourselves the opportunity to have a fast rounding and be clear for the beat and then really seeing how we got on.”

That strategy of going for clear space on the race course really paid off, and the British looked fast when they could sail the boat free of other boats. In the final Australia and France had no answer to the raw speed and composure of the British. The on-board comms from Bithell and strategist Hannah Mills sounded calm and measured. The reigning champions have certainly set the benchmark for the season.

With Iain ‘Goobs’ Jensen’s knee injury in high-wind training, Tom Slingsby was super fortunate to be able to grab his old mate Glenn Ashby at short notice. There aren’t many sailors in the world who could have slotted in so seamlessly as the much-loved and respected ‘Glenny’ who, with typical humour, told us that just a couple of days earlier he had been on his farm in Victoria, “feeding the cows”. Talking of Goobs’ injury, he assured my colleague Freddie Carr that he was optimistic about being back on the boat in time for Sydney six weeks from now, and maybe even Auckland in just four weeks.

Winning two races on their first day of competition confirms the prediction of many that the SailGP newcomers would be immediately competitive. Nathan Outteridge and his team were looking likely to make the three-boat final all weekend until one back tack in the prestart of the final fleet race. “We had a handling error in the pre-start,” Nathan told The Foil. “The breeze was getting stronger and stronger and we didn’t manage to execute a good tack in the back of the pre-start box and ended up off the foil. As a result we were late for the start.”

Still, not bad finishing fourth overall considering this was the first racing Nathan had done since co-steering Emirates Team New Zealand to America’s Cup victory all the way back in October 2024. “Today on the way in, Chris [Draper] and Andy [Maloney], said that’s probably some of the hardest conditions they’ve had to deal with on an F50. So that made me feel a little bit better because at times this felt pretty full-on and pretty loose.”

A bit like the British looking for clear space on the open race course, in the pre-start Quentin Delapierre and the French proved the masters of forging their own route into the start. Accelerating from way back in the start box, Delapierre has to hope that a gap opens up in the wall of slow-moving rivals slow-foiling their way towards the invisible dotted line in the water. Somehow the fearless Frenchman made it work – certainly three out of four times on the Saturday – regularly leading around Mark One. Dylan Fletcher, however, remains unconvinced about such an extreme approach. “We studied it in some detail and we've looked at it. And our view was that over the course of this season it's not really something we want to be looking at. We're a bit more happy to get around the mark in fifth and just play it from there.”

I haven’t always been that kind to the US SailGP team over the past season. Taylor Canfield’s crew won the very opening heat of Season 5 back in November 2024 and went on to finish third in a non-foiling Dubai. Canfield and Co. also fared pretty well at the very end of the season, getting a fifth place in the light airs of Abu Dhabi. All the stuff in between, however, was pretty lacklustre with a couple of real low points – that capsize in Sydney and collision with GBR in Sassnitz. We saw a different US team this past weekend. To find themselves in joint first place with France and Sweden at the end of Saturday was surely beyond anyone’s expectations. And OK, like the majority of the fleet on Sunday they looked like they were hanging on for grim death in the really breezy stuff. But to come away in fifth overall in full-on foiling conditions marks a real step-up for the Americans. Well done to them and let’s hope there’s more to come.

Damage to Spain’s boat during a routine gybe in a training session was a really unfortunate and undeserved start to Diego Botin’s season. The Spanish get no compensation points for the breakage, but if for any reason the boat isn’t repaired in time for Auckland they would get compensation for that. New Zealand, on the other hand, were judged by the umpires to be the architects of their own undoing, even if Peter Burling didn’t see it that way. The Kiwi skipper made no secret of his feelings that he felt like the wronged party and that the blame was all on the Swiss for not giving them time and opportunity to keep clear. Seven penalty points for New Zealand and no punishment for Sebastien Schneiter shows what the umpires thought.

So insistent was Burling in his position that I heard from a reliable source inside SailGP that he had even asked for the Kiwis to be loaned the Swiss boat for them to race on Sunday. When I asked the Swiss skipper for his response to this, he replied: “I think it's pretty clear. I think we can also see what the umpires think. Port/starboard is the first rule you learn when you start sailing and Pete has had plenty of time to avoid us as we gained the right of way. So I think you have to acknowledge when you are in the wrong and he has to accept that he made a mistake.”