up to speed ‘developing nation’ teams such as China and Japan, where the aim is to have the boats being sailed by 100 per cent national crew within two or three seasons. In addition to Draper and Fletcher onboard the Great Britain SailGP F50 are Fletcher’s 49er crew and London 2012 470 silver medallist Stuart Bithell, plus experienced all-rounder Richard Mason, currently racing the SAP GC32 on the Extreme Sailing Series. Team powerhouse is Matt Gotrel – once upon a time a 49er crew, but who went on to win rowing gold in the Men’s Eight at Rio. In fact, the Great Britain SailGP sailors are all Team GBR 49er/470 squad circa 2008. Onboard, Bithell will be the Glenn Ashby-style flight controller – in other words, the person in charge of joystick wiggling, altering the rake of the foils. Mason and Gotrel are manning the pumps, which on this occasion only drive the wing sheet.
It is slightly alarming that only two of the five have foiling catamaran experience, yet this is also true of all but two of the SailGP crews: the yet-to-be-announced Japanese team and Slingsby’s Aussie team. The latter comprises Kyle Langford and Sam Newton (both ex-Oracle, 2013 and 2017), Jason Waterhouse (Nacra 17 Olympic silver medallist and ex-SoftBank Team Japan) and Ky Hurst (ex-Oracle Team USA 2017).
By comparison, Fletcher has never sailed a big raceboat, although Draper defuses this by admitting that the first time he ever steered a boat with a wheel was on the AC72… And unfortunately there seems to be precious little time for the crew to get up to speed before the first event in February. They will get some days on the F50 in New Zealand in November and some more time in Sydney before the first regatta, otherwise they are reliant on the highly realistic Artemis Technologies-built foiling catamaran simulator that has been up and running in Cambridge. Being able to examine and analyse footage of AC50 racing in Bermuda is also proving of value. Onboard, Draper will man the wing sheet, camber and twist controls plus the jib sheet. He expects to be impressed by the F50: ‘The removal of the AC50 rules is going to help the boats in many areas and one of them is the electronics – that is a lot better, because there were a lot of restric- tions on what was a closed loop/open loop control system. As a result the systems have actually got a lot simpler.
‘Then there was the issue we had all the time in the last Cup, which was the limita- tion on [hydraulic] oil. Now we will go from empty to full on the accumulators very, very quickly. In comparison on the AC50s in Bermuda we were running out of oil and being tactically limited the whole time. That won’t be an issue now.’ This, combined with the lack of restric- tions on the shape of the new foils, means the F50 will be significantly faster than the AC50 and with a lower take-off speed,
Glanfield, plus two boatbuilders, as well as backroom staff, admin, financial, sponsor/marketing/PR, and so on. So this doesn’t quite extend to team rules advisors, nutritionists, physios, thera- pists and the like; although part of the reason for this is that SailGP is being run more on the model of the last two editions of the Volvo Ocean Race with ‘shared services’. The annual team budget includes a contribution to these shared services as well as logistics, design upgrades for the F50 and race management.
Above/left: Chris Draper bedecked in the full Prada spacesuit as he drives the teamʼs AC72 in San Francisco in 2013. Draper continued working with the Luna Rossa team expecting to steer the teamʼs AC62 in the 2017 Cup before the very much non-unanimous rule change to the AC50s, at which point syndicate chief Patrizio Bertelli pulled out of the event and threw in his lot – and his financial and technical resources – with Team New Zealand. And how sweetly that turned out
even with the current rigs which will be used for the first year.
As to the newly introduced automation onboard, Draper doesn’t feel it is exces- sive: ‘There will still be a lot of triggers and routines where you have to be bang on with your timings, as you had to in the past.’ Like dropping the weather board... ‘That will be manual, although your input may then trigger the start of a sequence, but you still have to drive, fly the boat and trim everything correctly to stay level.’ How SailGP teams are set up is also unusual. As we touched on last month, a unique feature of the new programme is that it owns not just the circuit but also all of the teams.
Teams are being provided with a budget of US$5million per annum, which does not include the capital costs of the boats or ongoing upgrades and is based on six events per year. This budget has been sub-divided into how much teams should spend on the various aspects of their campaign, from crew salaries to travel and training, and so on.
For example, they are now permitted a maximum of 18 personnel – however, the developing nation teams are permitted to exceed that total, if it fits within the budget, to help with building the programmes. In some cases there is also a travel cap, for example for the imminent sea trials in New Zealand that stands at 11.
Great Britain SailGP Team have already reached their staffing limit: in addition to the five sailors are two reserve sailors (Neil Hunter and Nick Hutton), a coach in two-time 470 Olympic silver medallist Joe
However, while teams have their budget broken down in advance, there is the option for them to rejig it. For example, if they feel they need more time on the simulator, they can negotiate this, although the funds for that have to come from elsewhere within their budget. The aim for each team is for it to become self-financing as quickly as possible with any sponsorship offsetting the team budget, but to get them going SailGP will be underwriting all of the team budgets for the first five years. According to Leslie Ryan, who has sponsor-hunting within her commercial remit for both the British team and the Cowes SailGP event, the aim is for the teams to raise something closer to US$7million per year in sponsor- ship – although it is at present unclear what happens if they reach the welcome scenario of exceeding this.
So are they going to cap budgets? ‘That does seem to be the general intention,’ says Ryan. ‘They don’t want some teams with US$5million/year and other teams with US$10million… or even more.’ SailGP is also funding the events. Then there are the usual rights negotiations between circuit, events and teams – for example, Land Rover is a ‘founding partner’ of the SailGP circuit but had it been title sponsor then teams would not have been able to pursue their own vehicle sponsorships.
However, according to Ryan there are now opportunities for a more ‘joined-up approach’: circuit and events to do joint deals as well as events and their national SailGP teams or across all three for items like clothing or airline tickets.
As someone who is overseeing the numbers for the Cowes SailGP event, Ryan observes: ‘They are well thought- through budgets. They know what to do. ‘This is obviously not being run on a shoestring. They haven’t under-specced anything. They want to see really impres- sive events. And each event will have its individual approach – ours is different because it is part of Lendy Cowes Week.’ The Cowes SailGP event will take place over 10-11 August next summer, the first weekend of Cowes Week, after racing finishes each day. Ryan expects the set-up to be very similar to that of the successful Extreme Sailing Series – with the grand- stand off Egypt Point and the technical area at Venture Quays in East Cowes. James Boyd
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