SailGP: Blair Tuke reflects on positives from disrupted SailGP season ahead of final regatta in San Francisco

The New Zealand SailGP team will return to the water this weekend. Photo / Getty Images

The pieces are falling into place for New Zealand's SailGP team.

Embarking on their first season in the league in the 2021-22 campaign, the sailing calendar was always likely to make things tricky for them.

While the league started after the America's Cup had been decided, the postponement of the Olympic Games from 2020 to 2021 meant five of the eight sailors in the team were going to miss time in their F50 catamaran, Amokura.

Despite their hurdles, the team have competed well in their debut campaign – the competition's sophomore season – and heading into the final event of the year in San Francisco this weekend, could end the season fourth on the leaderboard.

"It's no secret it was a pretty challenging year for us with the rescheduling of the Olympics, for our first season in SailGP, not quite having the consistency of crew each event made it difficult to learn those lessons on the learning curve that we needed to close in on the top of the fleet," wing trimmer Blair Tuke told Newstalk ZB.

"But we've still done well to finish mid-table, with a chance to finish fourth in our first season. We're pretty happy with that. Looking ahead to next season, for sure, getting consistency in the crew with that limited build into each weekend is very important."

While the team expect to be without flight controller Andy Maloney when the next season kicks off in Bermuda in May - as Maloney and his wife are expecting a child around the same time - the New Zealand team is likely to be more of a tight-knit group for the 2022-23 campaign; and have recruited the highly experienced Ray Davies to come onboard as a coach.

Tuke said Davies' appointment was an important one for the team, who have been without a specific coach all season.

"It's a huge boost for us," Tuke said. "We've done our first season in the league without an official coach; we've had some spare sailors around and really been learning and coaching ourselves.

"To have the experience and knowledge of Ray coming onboard, he's had a relationship with a lot of people in the team over the years in different environments, so to have him now in this team is going to be a real boost.

"We've got a lot of things we want to work on to bridge the gap of where we want to get to, and having him involved is really going to help us with that."

Watch the SailGP grand final live this Sunday 27 & Monday 28 March. Coverage from 10am on Sky Sport and free-to-air on nzherald.co.nz/sailgp