"Raw, physical and in your face": Kai Colman on why the ETF26 is SailGP's proving ground

For Kai Colman, the final round of the 2026 ETF26 Series in the Bay of Quiberon was the weekend when the hard yards started to pay off. Team Sansin didn't top the leaderboard, but the Aussie mainsheet trimmer came away from Brittany convinced they are heading in the right direction, and sure that this 26-foot foiling catamaran is one of the best routes into SailGP.

"Honestly, for our team, it was a great event," Kai told The Foil a few days after returning from France. "It was basically all the hard work we'd been doing, the things we were focusing on, uniting as a team amidst all the challenges involved in racing in that fleet and at that level. We're feeling really rewarded and forever grateful for the opportunity to race in this class."

He's realistic, too. "We know we're not at the level we want to be, but we also understand the challenge that is racing in this class. So it was good to end on a high note."

For anyone who hasn't come across it, the ETF26 is a 26-foot foiling catamaran conceived in France around a decade ago, by a group of people who remain involved in the class today. This season marked a major step forward, with the boats now fully foiling around the whole course thanks to upgraded foils, full rudder differential, and modified and new sails designed to support upwind foiling.

"We have an awesome class with SailGP-style racing," says Kai. "For us, this is our SailGP2."

When Kai took me for a spin on Lake Garda earlier in the season, I could see why. The ETF26 is mechanical rather than electronic, with none of the hydraulics of an F50, but the interplay between helm, flight controller and trimmer feels like a raw rehearsal for the real thing.

The pros clearly agree. The French K-Challenge outfit has used the class to sharpen its sailors, fielding Jason Saunders, Quentin Delapierre and Enzo Balanger on one boat in 2025, alongside a mixed youth and women's crew on a second. In 2026 the class served as K-Challenge's youth and women's America's Cup development programme, though they won't return next year as they move into the AC40.

Losing two boats is a blow, but Kai understands that Denmark's Rockwool Racing, who have raced in the class before with their senior SailGP team and development sailors, will be back in 2027 with two boats.

"From talking to Quentin and Nicolai and Enzo and a lot of the guys at the helm, this class has given them an incredible opportunity for high-intensity start training, and for the key positions in SailGP on the F50," says Kai. "This boat is the mechanical, no-support version of that. It's as raw as it can possibly get. Communicating is hard, the boat's physically hard, and the racing is raw and in your face."

"The F50 is definitely not an easy boat to sail, but these boats are not easy to fly either. They have their challenges, and even the good teams make the mistakes that cost you races. It's been an awesome showcase for that."

Team Sansin has been brought together by helmsman Graham Sutherland, whose professional career spans America's Cup campaigns and SailGP Canada. Backed by Canadian timber-finishing company Sansin, Sutherland has given a whole bunch of under-30s a shot at racing in the class.

Kai joined midway through last season as mainsheet trimmer, a role that also covers the code zero when it's in use, upwind or downwind depending on conditions. The flight control position has rotated through the season, with Sam Street stepping in for a spell during the middle of the year, but with American sailor Severin Gramm taking the role for the latter part of the season including Quiberon.

"We're just a bunch of keen yachties who want to go out and show the world what we can do," says Kai. "Every day we wake up and think, right, this is going to challenge us. And we love every bit of it."

Quiberon delivered big conditions, and Kai's main conclusion was clear. "Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. Communication, timing." Not so different to what you hear from the teams competing in SailGP. The crew put in a solid block of training days beforehand to get dialled in. "There's fire in our belly after this event, based on how well we worked together. It was certainly a challenge, but we banged our heads together and off we went."

As in every corner of the sport, starting is the hardest part. The class mixes upwind and reaching starts, and in stronger breeze the reaching starts are now set further uprange because, as Kai puts it, "the reach can be slightly sketchy. These are manual control boats, so it's very easy to lose control."

There's no foil tacking, so tacking cleanly is critical. Foiling gybes are getting more consistent across the fleet but remain far from easy. "The difference between crashing down after a gybe or a touch-and-go is a massive thing in the fleet, as we realised in the breeze."

The top-mark bear-aways are working well with the new foils, but they still take your breath away. "You'll be going around the top mark at sometimes 20 knots, and by the time you've gone past it you're over 30."

Top speeds in Quiberon peaked at 34 knots, set by local Nacra 17 ace Tim Mourniac and his Team Pro crew, who set the pace all week. Team Sansin weren't far behind at 33.4 knots. Kai reckons the new foils cost a fraction of top-end pace downwind compared with the old set, but deliver far better all-round racing. And with Quiberon's shifty breeze coming off the peninsula, or swell when it blows from the other direction, outright speed isn't the priority anyway.

"We're not thinking about top speeds when we're racing the boats," he says. "We're trying to go as fast as we can at the best angle relative to everybody else. I'm sure if we went for speed runs we could exceed that, but you pay a fair penalty for making a mistake at that speed. We love the challenge, that's for sure."

With Rockwool's return putting a current SailGP team back on the start line, 2027 will be a fresh measure of how far Team Sansin has come. Kai isn't short of ambition.

"We're all looking forward to absolutely kicking their arse," he grins. "But time will tell. We'll give it our best."

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