Inside SailGP - Sailing the world’s fastest catamaran

Sam Newton calls it the kind of job he’d do even if he weren’t getting paid - racing at speeds in excess of 100km/h across some of the most scenic harbours in the world.

Now in his eighth year as a high-performance grinder aboard the Australian SailGP team, recently renamed BONDS Flying Roos, 39-year-old Newton is a veteran at manoeuvring a 15m F50 foiling catamaran at three to four times the speed of the wind.

Racing within sight of the shore, much to the delight of grandstand crowds, SailGP’s fleet of identical F50 racing catamarans brings together 12 (soon to be 14) national teams: USA, New Zealand, Great Britain, Brazil, Italy, Canada, France, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Australia.

Competing for a total prize pool of US$12.8 million, this is professional sailing at its finest with the world’s best-of-the-best battling it out in 12 race events each year. With no variation in the boats themselves, who takes home the trophy comes down to the skill, focus, and experience of crews … and perhaps, Newton admits, just a little bit of luck.

“You’ve got to get it all right, you’ve got to tick all the boxes and I think, like everything in life, you’ve got to get a little bit lucky at times,” he says.

That ‘luck’ he talks about underplays the intense physical and mental training required to stay at the top of the game in an sport where boat crews number just six, and a fleet of elite sailing athletes are hot on your heels.

“Everyone’s trying to operate at the top, so you’ve got to keep onto your training - everyone wants to win,” Newton says. 

After five seasons with SailGP’s BONDS Flying Roos, 39-year-old Newton says he has many years to go.

“I didn’t think that at the age of 39 I’d be modelling underwear,” he jokes, but he’s seasoned enough to know that accommodating fans and sponsors is key. “Even if that’s prancing around in Bonds underwear.”

Back on the water, Newton says he can feel the tension building. “In Season 1 there were six teams and now we’ve got 12,” he says. “It’s getting harder. I certainly think we’re strong enough as a team, we have the confidence that we can win.”

“The way I like to think of strategy around a racetrack is that in the absence of all other boats, what would you do?” says 24-year-old rising star Tash Bryant, the eyes and ears for BONDS Flying Roos driver Tom Slingsby.

“We have so many boats on the racetrack and every 10 to 15 seconds we have an intersection with another boat or an intersection with another boundary or mark, so it’s just non-stop,” she says.

Bryant, who shares her role with teammate Nina Curtis, is the youngest member of a superstar crew with a swag of Olympic medals, Hall of Fame inductions and Sydney Hobart wins. But after three years onboard with SailGP, Bryant’s own CV is stacking up nicely. 

Ever quick to grab the next opportunity, Bryant last year sailed with the Athena Pathway British Women’s America’s Cup team, calling the experience ‘insane’.

She started her journey to professional high-speed sailing on youth class boats, working up to Olympic classes, then 49ers with a goal to winning an Olympic medal. Her wins include 29er Youth World Champion 2016, Australian Female Sailor of the Year 2017, and first place in the Under-21 World Championships 2020 (49erFX Class), qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

But there were lows along the way, too. When she and fellow sailor Annie Wilmot were declined Olympic selection, she almost abandoned sailing altogether.

“I lost motivation to go out on the water and I just didn’t really want to sail,” she said.

So Bryant took up foiling, calling it one of the most challenging things she’d ever done. But when her steep learning curve was over, Bryant had become a proficient iQFoil hydrofoiling windsurfer.

“Now I’m on an AC50 and AC40, and it’s so much fun. I’d love to drive an America’s Cup AC boat as well. I know it’s a long-term goal, but I’ll keep chipping away,” she says.

SailGP’s Women’s Pathway Programme requires boats to have at least one female crew member aboard and to identify, train and give race exposure to a team of at least three female sailors.

This kind of opportunity is something Bryant credits to the previous generation of female sailors who helped bash down the door. “They opened it just in time for me to walk through and I’m extremely grateful for that.

“One day, it’s going to be that the best people get to sail this boat. Females will be selected for their ability. We just have a little bit of a gap at the moment but we’re slowly closing that.”

Bryant hopes the exposure that SailGP gets worldwide will inspire more girls to see a career path in high-performance sailing. “There’s just a huge future for us now. I’ll never look back.”

SailGP Season 6 kicks off with a Fremantle debut on January 17 to 18, and returns to Sydney Harbour for Event 3 on February 28. Buy tickets at: sailgp.com.

YOU CAN FIND THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE DEC-JAN (40.6) ISSUE OF CLUB MARINE MAGAZINE.