Sail GP Portsmouth set for full-on Solent ‘obstacle course’

The hotly anticipated British leg of the SailGP circuit, the Emirates Great Britain Sail Grand Prix in Portsmouth, takes place this weekend from 19-20 July. Dylan Fletcher and Tom Slingsby share what to expect

The hotly anticipated British leg of the SailGP circuit, the Emirates Great Britain Sail Grand Prix in Portsmouth, takes place this weekend from 19-20 July.

Twelve F50s will be racing on a tight racecourse just off Southsea, with an enormous grandstand in the race village expected to welcome 20,000 spectators over the weekend.

Weather conditions look promising, with 8-16 knots forecast for Saturday 19, and a punchy 16-26 knots possible for Sunday.

SailGP CEO Russell Coutts commented: “10 years ago I wouldn’t have said this [20,000-strong crowd] was likely, but we obviously set the tone in Auckland, where we had a similar size crowd on shore, and we’re absolutely thrilled to have that sort of support here in Portsmouth.

“I think fans are in for a great event – especially on Sunday, when the breeze is going to be up, they’re probably going to be on that small wing foil configuration. And who knows, they might hit that new speed record.”

Sail GP obstacle course

For added jeopardy, the course area – always intentionally tight at Sail GP events – is likely to include several immovable obstacles – potentially including Spitbank Fort, one of Portsmouth’s famous sea defences, and shipping lane markers. A substation exclusion zone will be in place from 2pm each day in the busy eastern Solent.

Giles Scott, who helms the Canada SailGP team commented: “I think the waters here are going to be an amazing racecourse. There will be some obstacles to dodge – may be a fort, some navy posts. So there is a lot going on, but it’s going to be an amazing venue.

Dylan Fletcher, helmsman of the Emirates Great Britain team, told Yachting World: “It’s an interesting race course – which if it gets the green light could add a curve ball! Not so much the marks, more the proximity of the start line to the shore!”

Tom Slingsby, team boss and helmsman of the Australian BONDS Flying Roos SailGP team, cautioned that with added spectacle, comes added risk for the teams. He told Yachting World: “Some of the Sail GP race tracks have had a few obstacles – Cadiz has a reef. But I’d say this is probably the most obstacles we’ve had, and probably the biggest one with the fort.

“Honestly, we’re going to have to go away and brush up on our rules when approaching an obstacle and who gains right of way and how. I’m going to go and brush up on that stuff. But other than that I’m pretty confident.

“Sometimes when you’ve got obstacles on the course the drivers just need to have a little level of respect that – I might have right of way here, but if I keep pushing this there’s going to be a nasty crash, and back out of the situation. It’s not nice to back out of a situation because it doesn’t help your race result, but we also need to have a level of understanding that these boats are dangerous and if we push the situation too hard where it might not be your boat, but another boat might have an incident. You’ve got to have enough common sense.

“The penalty points work for boat on boat situations, but often we’re coming into a situation and there’s five boats coming in and one boat might have right of way and exercise that right, but in doing that can cause a collision between others.

“Whether the rules need to adapt more for these sorts of racecourses or this type of racing, we’ve got to keep looking at that because these boots, when they hit, can be catastrophic and very dangerous.”

Pressure on British SailGP team

There was much talk in the press conference about the potential home advantage for the British team.

Emirates Great Britain SailGP team CEO Ben Ainslie commented: “People talk about pressure in sport, and it’s definitely an added pressure when you see tens of thousands of people there all expecting the home team to win, that’s frankly a little bit intimidating. But we also say pressure is a privilege and I think Dylan, Hannah and the team will thrive off that.

For the British squad, however, it’s not just the home crowd that’s piling on the pressure – after a near perfect start to the season, the Emirates Great Britain Sail Grand Prix team has dropped to fourth overall, finishing the previous event in New York in eighth, following a seventh in San Francisco and fourth in Los Angeles.

“Ultimately we had a really good start to the season, but I’m still inexperienced, explained helmsman Dylan Fletcher. I think we saw some cracks appear in San Fran, so we’ve put some things and processes in place so hopefully we won’t see those again.

He explained further, telling Yachting World: “In LA we had a bad first day but a good second day, and we were one point away from the final, so it’s not really a bad event, it’s just the margins are super-tight.

“I think San Francisco was the one we were a bit surprised about, we went there with high expectations – probably too high expectations. We made some mistakes, and then didn’t quite rectify those mistakes.

“In New York we spent a lot of time on debriefing and we were in good spirits, but sailing three-up was really a curve ball that I’d never done before. And part of think the problem was the way that we sail the boat four-up was little bit different to some of the others and that exposed some errors. But in reality there was just two decisions or mistakes that day that cost the difference between in the hunt and not, and Sunday we had a top three day. So it looked really bad on paper, but it’s not quite so bad.

“And we had a really unfortunate incident with the Canadians that cost us a season point, the umpire have said they got the call wrong, but ultimately we have to bear that.

“But we’ve spent a lot of time watching videos of the others teams, and they’re not doing anything special, they’re not doing anything we’re not doing. They’re making plenty of mistakes and that’s the nature of SailGP, you’ve just got to keep fighting for every point.”

More to come?

So, if each team is still making mistakes – how much potential is there still to come from the F50s?

“There’s plenty [of room to improve],” says Fletcher. “You can see when we’re all in our own space, we’re all sailing the boat quite well, but sailing them at that level all the time is another thing – especially the start. You see some teams start really well one event and sometimes really bad, so being consistent there will deliver the results.”

Tom Slingsby agreed: “There’s still a huge amount of potential there. These boots are incredibly difficult to sail, and no one is sailing a perfect race.

“Compared to when I used to sail my Laser I think I got a lot closer to 100% than I ever have in a SailGP race. The difficulty of the boots, the co-ordination of the team – just everything coming into it. the top teams might not even be at 90%.”

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