The Foil Weekly Wrap - 20 April ‘26

The Kiwis continue to gather AC75 intel while their rivals are yet to launch, Ben Ainslie's British challenge is heading to the courts, and Alinghi are about to break months of silence. Here's what’s happening in the America’s Cup and beyond…

Emirates Team New Zealand are the only outfit in the AC38 cycle actually flying an AC75 at the moment, and they got day one of their second testing block out of the way on Friday 17 April.

The session ran for four hours on the Hauraki Gulf in a modest breeze, but the day ended early when a jib tack failed, the sail parting from the forestay under heavy Cunningham load. An annoyance rather than a disaster – the rig was checked and found to be undamaged – but a reminder that the Protocol's insistence on legacy sails, originally designed for one Cup cycle and now brought into a second, has its limits. Breaks will happen.

On the personnel front, Serena Woodall and Helena Sanderson have been confirmed as full-time additions to the sailing squad, following several months on trial. Both will be central to the team's Women's America's Cup programme, while integrating into the wider squad.

ETNZ are still the only team actively sailing an AC75. Every other challenger is still in AC40 mode, or yet to launch anything at all. The Kiwis are accumulating knowledge the rest of the fleet simply doesn't have yet, and that gap isn’t getting any smaller.

Of the original five founding members of the ACP, Alinghi are the last team to publicly reveal their crew. That changes this Thursday. A full squad announcement is scheduled for 23 April at Marina Vela in Barcelona, where the team's AC40s are also expected to hit the water for the first time, weather permitting. The Foil will be there on the ground, so look out for full coverage on the site and social channels later this week.

The legal dispute between Jim Ratcliffe's Ineos and the GB1 America's Cup team over the British AC75 has now been formally filed in court. The details of what's being contested remain somewhat opaque, but the filing marks the escalation of what had previously been a behind-closed-doors disagreement over the future of Britain's campaign.

None of it appears to be slowing the team down, though. GB1's crew are in Italy working through AC40 preparation ahead of the first preliminary regatta at Cagliari next month – simulator sessions and boat-on-boat practice set to continue this week regardless of what’s playing out in the boardroom. What remains unclear is whether any of this has the potential to disrupt GB1’s actual racing programme.

The M32 Miami Winter Series wrapped up its fourth and final event of the season at the weekend, with Ryan McKillen's Surge taking the event win ahead of Tuuci and Rated X. The season title, though, went to Miles Julien's Youngblood – his first series win in four attempts on the Miami circuit, secured in a final day that came down to the last race. Julien needed to manage the gap to Rated X through the fleet, and managed it well enough to take the championship with something to spare.

Lorient has been confirmed as the finish for the inaugural Ocean Race Atlantic, completing a route from New York City that starts on 1 September, with the lead boats expected into the Brittany port around 8-9 September. Approximately 3,000 nautical miles of North Atlantic on fully crewed IMOCAs. It’s also the first IMOCA race to insist on an even gender split: two women and two men on each boat, plus an onboard reporter.

Team Malizia, skippered by Boris Herrmann, this week confirmed their crew: Cole Brauer, Justine Mettraux, and Julien Villion as co-skippers, with Gauthier Lebec as onboard reporter. It’s a strong, settled‑looking group – Brauer, Mettraux, and Villion all raced with Malizia in The Ocean Race Europe last summer – and crucially it’ll be the first outing for the team’s new IMOCA, due to hit the water at the end of June.

Francesca Clapcich's squad for 11th Hour Racing is also confirmed: Alberto Bona, Elodie-Jane Mettraux, and Will Harris sail alongside the Italian-American skipper, with filmmaker Meredith Rodgers as onboard reporter. Harris and Clapcich finished second in the IMOCA class at the Transat Café L'OR last year, and the 11th Hour Racing boat holds the IMOCA 24-hour distance record at over 641 nautical miles. On paper, it's one of the fastest IMOCAs in the fleet, and they know how to sail it.

So both Malizia and 11th Hour Racing have good reasons to fancy their chances. With other confirmed entries including the DMG Mori Sailing Team, Oliver Heer Ocean Racing, and Paul Meilhat Sailing Team, plus one more yet to be announced, the fleet is looking properly competitive.

The 57th Semaine Olympique Française got under way today in Hyères and will run through to Saturday 25 April. Around 705 sailors from 59 nations are competing across all ten Olympic classes – somewhat smaller than the 1,100 who came to Palma for the Trofeo Princesa Sofía a few weeks ago, but still a serious turnout for the second stop on the new Sailing Grand Slam circuit.

World Sailing has committed to locking in the final LA28 Olympic medal race format by 31 May – and with the Dutch Water Week starting on 30 May, Hyères is effectively the last major testing ground before that deadline. The revamped medal format, introduced partly in response to IOC pressure to give sailing the kind of sudden-death final that makes other sports enjoyable for casual audiences, got a mixed response in Palma. Let’s see how it plays out this week…

The RC44 circuit makes its first visit to Puntaldia this week, 23-26 April, a boutique marina tucked just south of Olbia on Sardinia's northeast coast. John Bassadone's Peninsula Racing arrive as season leaders after their surprise win at Puerto Calero in Lanzarote back in February, their first 44Cup event victory since 2017. The boats are tight, the fleet is tight, so expect another proper scrap all the way to the final day.

Running concurrently with that event is Antigua Sailing Week, 22-26 April, which has reinvented itself this year with a new around-the-island format. Boats race between destinations in legs – starting from Nelson's Dockyard, stopping at Green Island, Jumby Bay, Ffryes Beach, and back – with four divisions split between monohull and multihull, racing and cruising rally. The general feeling from those signed up is that this one’s more a Caribbean destination cruise with a bit of racing bolted on than a flat‑out regatta, and by the sound of it, nobody’s complaining.