SailGP - Higher, Faster, Stronger

SailGP has made a big impact in a short time. The global circuit with F50 foiling catamarans is a made-for-TV circuit that brings together some of the biggest names in the sport, including Olympic gold medallists like Nathan Outteridge, Tom Slingsby and Sir Ben Ainslie.

Season 2 of SailGP concluded only a week and a half ago in San Francisco, USA, leaving some of the sailors with a mad scramble to fly back across to Europe in time for the start of the Trofeo Princesa Sofia. The Rio 2016 Olympic silver medallists in the Nacra 17, Jason Waterhouse (AUS) and Lisa Darmanin (AUS), are both involved. Waterhouse is the flight controller for Slingsby’s season-winning Australia SailGP Team while his cousin Darmanin is an on-the-water reporter for the media team.

“It’s great to be so close to these incredible boats, and to be exposed to the best in the business,” says Darmanin. “You learn so much from the intensity of SailGP with all the technology that goes into making it happen.” As to whether the SailGP experience feeds back into their foiling Nacra 17 campaign, Darmanin laughs: “I was worried after Jason has spent time on a fast boat like the F50 that he comes back into the Nacra treating it like a go-kart and just wanting to send it all the time!”

49erFX sailor Sena Takano is part of the Japan SailGP Team, riding at the back of the boat providing tactical input to the skipper Nathan Outteridge. “My job is communication, and it has really helped me working on the communication in the 49erFX,” says the 24 year old who has represented Japan in the women’s skiff at the Rio and Tokyo Games. Few of us will ever experience the sailing speed that Takano has enjoyed on the F50, and she admits it’s a feeling she’ll never get used to. “The speed is like, well, I cannot explain properly, but it is so fast and I feel scared but also a feeling like I never felt before. I can’t help myself from grinning, it’s just so much fun.”

Florian Trittel represented Spain at the Tokyo Games in the front of the Nacra 17 catamaran although has now switched to crewing for Diego Botin in the front of the 49er skiff. He’s also the wing trimmer for the Spain SailGP Team skippered by fellow Olympian and 470 bronze medallist Jordi Xammar.

Trittel loves the speed and the adrenalin of SailGP, but he also appreciates the campaign aspect of the circuit. “It’s a bigger group, a bigger team and you’ve got so many different sorts of inputs on the bigger boat that we don’t have in the Olympic boats. I think it’s all very much related and very translatable as well. So I think we take something from our Olympic campaign to SailGP and vice versa.”

The high speeds are something that become familiar surprisingly quickly, and it helps with the decision making process when getting back on to a slower boat like the 49er, shared Trittel. “You have to think faster, and you have to get used to working under pressure. There’s a lot of pressure and politics involved in SailGP. And certainly in big teams you have to work hard to make sure everything works out well between all the different people. Jordi is the skipper but we try to reach a consensus where everyone’s point of view is listened to. It’s good to respect everyone’s opinion but the process is not easy. SailGP is teaching us to become more professional and that all feeds back into our Olympic campaign.”