The Foil Weekly Wrap - 16 March ’26

From Sydney Harbour skiff chaos to Cape Horn crossings, Kiwi AC75 recon to a new 470 title in Vilamoura, it's been another stacked week across the sailing world.

Here's everything you need to know…

Britain’s Martin Wrigley and Bettine Harris are the new 470 European Champions after a masterclass in Vilamoura. The British duo had clawed their way into the overall lead on Friday with back-to-back race wins, and Saturday's opening medal race put the title beyond doubt. Wrigley and Harris won that first race outright, extending their buffer to seven points over Italy's Giacomo Ferrari and Alessandra Dubbini – enough to clinch gold with a race still to sail.

The second medal race was a formality for the Brits – though they had a shaky start, it didn't matter. The real drama in race two played out behind them: Ferrari and Dubbini claimed silver after overhauling Spain's Jordi Xammar and Marta Cardona in a fight that went down to the final gate. Xammar and Cardona settled for bronze, unable to defend their 2025 crown.

The regatta served as a live trial for a new scoring format, designed to keep the medal races genuinely decisive. After qualifying, teams carry forward only their position as points (tenth becomes ten points, and so on). In the medal series, gaps between the top three are compressed to a maximum of nine points if any boat pulls too far ahead, ensuring every crew arrives with a realistic shot at the podium. The verdict? Mixed reviews in Vilamoura. It sharpens the drama on the final day, though some sailors felt it punishes consistent qualifying performances. Whether World Sailing adopts this for the Olympic circuit remains to be seen, but expect the conversation to run all the way to LA 2028.

John Winning Jr, Fang Warren and Lewis Brake made it three JJ Giltinan titles in a row aboard Yandoo, sealing the championship with a race to spare before Sunday's finale on Sydney Harbour. Consistency was the key: while rivals traded blows across nine races in wildly variable conditions, Yandoo banked finishes near the front day after day.

The final race belonged to Germany's Black Knight, skippered by Heinrich von Bayern with Tom Martin and Andy Martin. The team delivered their first-ever JJ Giltinan race win since Heinrich began competing in 2018, handling a 15-18-knot north-easterly superbly to hold off Queensland's GC Sails and New Zealand's Shaw and Partners.

But the week belonged to Yandoo, who finished on 22 points, six clear of Keagan York's Shaw and Partners Financial Services-Australia, with GC Sails third. The 18-footers continue to deliver exactly what the format promises – flat-out action, capsizes, comebacks and drama by the boatload. Winning once on Sydney Harbour is an achievement, but three times in a row, in a class this unforgiving, takes something else entirely.

Four years in the making, Gitana 18 has finally touched water. The new Ultim trimaran – officially 'Maxi Edmond de Rothschild' – completed her first sea trials off Brittany last week, marking a major milestone for the Gitana Team since the project began in 2022. Skipper Charles Caudrelier and the team took the boat – the 28th vessel in the 150-year Rothschild lineage – out for a spin between the islands of Groix and Belle-Île-en-Mer.

But it wasn’t a speed run. The foils haven’t even been fitted yet. Instead, the session focused on system validation, load testing, sail hoists and rudder handling, with the team deliberately taking a methodical approach given the boat's complexity. The team have their sights set on the Route du Rhum at the start of November.

Emirates Team New Zealand got Taihoro flying again on the Waitematā Harbour in Auckland last week, completing a five-hour commissioning session that saw the re-configured AC75 run through tacks, gybes and practice pre-starts in 7-12 knots of north-easterly breeze.

The session marked the first outing for a crew that included three new faces: Iain Jensen on port trim, Seb Menzies taking his first AC75 helm stint, and Olympic gold medallist Jo Aleh in a dedicated fifth-crew role focused on performance monitoring and sail trim data. Nathan Outteridge and Blair Tuke shifted to port side, swapping from their Barcelona configuration.

What the recon teams noticed: the foil arm fairings have been slimmed significantly, the heavy 'foil spike' ballast shapes from Barcelona are gone, and pitot tubes have appeared on the foil bulbs for precise water-speed telemetry. Chief designer Dan Bernasconi confirmed the team have taken weight out of the foils, targeting improved take-off performance in the lighter end of the AC38 wind range (6.5–23 knots).

READ MORE: The AC75's dramatic diet – and why it gives ETNZ an early edge

Rumours of a sixth AC38 challenger have surfaced, with Czech billionaire Karel Komárek reportedly linked to a potential entry. Komárek has the financial firepower, but money alone won't get you into the America's Cup.

Under AC38 rules, new entrants can’t build an AC75 from scratch – they must purchase an existing boat that raced in the 2024 cycle. Of the six hulls from Barcelona, five are already spoken for by confirmed challengers. That leaves American Magic's AC75 Patriot as the only option on the market.

American Magic have signalled they're sitting out AC38, with their focus turned to SailGP, but that doesn't mean they're done with the Cup entirely. With AC39 set for 2029, selling the boat now would close the door on a future campaign. Why give up your hardware if you might want it back in three years?

The entry deadline is 31 March. Just over two weeks to find out if Komárek's camp can work a miracle.

Ben Ainslie's GB1 squad has announced a partnership with PhysicsX, bringing AI-powered engineering to their AC38 campaign. The platform, rooted in Formula 1 development work, will support system-level optimisation across aerodynamics, hydrodynamics and control systems. PhysicsX is working alongside engineers in Portsmouth as an embedded partner, "strengthening the feedback loop between simulation, data, and on-water results" as GB1 chases marginal gains across every system on the boat.

It's not just the cyclors who've been made redundant by technology. With batteries replacing leg power and AI now embedded in the design loop, the modern America's Cup has become as much a software battle as a sailing one.

The Auckland collision was worse than we thought. Leigh McMillan, wing trimmer for the French SailGP team, has revealed he required shoulder surgery after the dramatic crash, with both his supraspinatus and subscapularis tendons completely detached from the bone. He's now strapped into an arm brace for four weeks, with a recovery timeline that will keep him out of action for around six months.

McMillan intends to continue supporting Les Bleus strategically during the transition, though his replacement for Rio in a few weeks remains unconfirmed. Meanwhile, there's speculation he could have a role with K-Challenge for the America's Cup. Beyond the signing of Diego Botín and Florian Trittel, the French challenger’s full crew lineup is due to be announced tomorrow. Watch this space.

Charlie Julien's Rated X claimed victory at the March edition of the M32 Miami Winter Series, but the weekend was a test of patience as much as pace. Squalls, lightning and heavy rain swept through Coconut Grove, forcing racing to be scrapped on both Friday and Sunday. A sunny window on Saturday allowed five light-air races to be squeezed in, with shifty breeze and patchy pressure rewarding clean manoeuvres over raw aggression.

Rated X posted a disciplined 4-3-2-2-2 scoreline, never winning a race but never far from the front. Bill Ruh's Pursuit showed explosive speed with back-to-back bullets mid-regatta, and Larry Phillips's Midtown Racing opened the day with a win of their own, but in the end it came down to consistency. Miles Julien's Youngblood finished second, with Ryan McKillen's Surge – the reigning world champions – third.

The Julien brothers are now locked in a tight season battle: Youngblood leads overall on 43 points, Rated X on 40. The stage is set for a decisive showdown at the final event from 17-19 April.

Last night Crédit Mutuel crossed the line in Recife as winners of Globe40 Leg 5 after 25 days and nearly 6,000 miles from Valparaíso. Ian Lipinski and Antoine Carpentier had built a 612-mile lead but watched it dissolve to just 12 miles by the Brazilian coast as Jonas Gerckens and Corentin Douguet on Belgium Ocean Racing-Curium mounted a stunning comeback.

However, a late fishing-net entanglement cost the Belgian crew dearly – Gerckens had to swim for an hour to clear the lines – and Crédit Mutuel pulled clear again to hold a 50-mile buffer by the finish. The two boats are now level on 19 points overall, with one final leg to decide it all.

Paul Morvan claimed overall victory at the Solo Guy Cotten, the season-opening Figaro Bénéteau race out of Concarneau. Following two short coastal races on Monday and Tuesday, the story of the 240-mile offshore leg belonged to Loïs Berrehar, who fought through huge swell and cross seas to overtake Morvan just two miles from the finish. The Banque Populaire skipper – back on the Figaro circuit while his Vendée Globe IMOCA takes shape – finished fifth overall.

The Solitaire du Figaro kicks off on 17 May. Expect the old guard (Richomme, Beyou, Lunven) and the new generation (Tom Goron, Hugo Dhallenne) to go at it again.

Five days, sixteen races, 100+ athletes from nearly 30 nations. The iQFOiL International Games wrapped up in El Puerto de Santa María with an action-packed medal series across six fleets. In the senior women, Spain's Pilar Lamadrid delivered a flawless grand final performance on home waters, leading from start to finish ahead of Czech sailors Nela Sadilková and Barbora Svíková who completed the podium. It was Lamadrid's first major win in some time – and she'll take confidence into the Trofeo Princesa Sofía in Palma at the end of this month.

Brazil's Mateus Isaac dominated the senior men's final, fending off Americans Noah Lyons and Makani Andrews in a downwind slalom format. The U19 titles went to Salomé Simon of France (women) and Peyton Dits of the Netherlands (men), while in U17 Turkey's Parla Kabasakal fought back from an early deficit to claim the girls crown and Spain's Enric Patiño Riutord took boys gold.

North America's largest-ever foiling event lands in Pensacola this week, with the All-Stars Invitational starting tomorrow before the Pre-Games (19-21 March) and main WASZP Games (22-23 March).

The All-Stars brings together 15 of the world's best WASZP foilers for high-intensity sprint racing, competing for a $10,000 prize pool. Names to watch: Pearl Lattanzi (USA), nominated for 2025 USA Yachtswoman of the Year and tipped to win the Female World Championship; Andrew Chisholm (CAN), the U19 world champion who finished fourth overall in a 200-boat fleet at Weymouth; and Pablo Astiazaran Pérez-Cela (ESP), winner of the 2025 Pre-Games Men's title and runner-up at last year's Games.

The opening ceremony will be hosted at the American Magic high-performance facility – a statement of intent for Pensacola's growing status as a foiling hub. The team's SailGP training facility is set to open with the delivery of their first F50 in September.