It will be some time before we see New Zealand’s Black Foils back on the SailGP starting line.
After a major crash between the team and France in Auckland on Saturday saw two sailors sent to hospital and both crews ruled out for the weekend, their F50 foiling catamaran will be shipped to SailGP Technologies in Southampton to be repaired. It was the second regatta in a row that saw boats damaged in a crash, after the New Zealand and Swiss teams collided in the first race of the season opened in Perth last month.
With both vessels in Auckland badly damaged in the collision, a big job lies ahead of the SailGP tech team, who will look to get the teams back on the water as soon as possible.
“The French were not at fault, or were deemed not at fault by the jury, [so] they get their boat repaired as a priority and the Black Foils would be after that,” SailGP chief executive Sir Russell Coutts confirmed.
“We clearly had a lot of damage in Perth and then this damage means that we are, you know, it’ll be a challenge to get it repaired, so they definitely won’t be racing in Sydney. But beyond that, I can’t say. You know, we’ve got to come up with a plan and see how we can get them back on the water as soon as we can.”
Part of that plan includes the possibility that SailGP could take working components off the Black Foils’ boat and use them to repair the French boat, given the Kiwi crew are not the priority team in the rebuild.
In terms of cosmetic damage, the biggest concern for the French was that they lost the front of their left hull. However, it won’t be clear just how much more damage was done to other components of the vessel until a proper assessment can be carried out in Southampton.
“We can take the left-hand side of the boat off the Kiwi boat and perhaps put it on the French boat. But we don’t know what other damage there might be,” Coutts said.
“You’ve got to do a full analysis and non-destructive testing on some of those structures just to make sure that they weren’t overloaded or damaged before you go out again. These boats are under pretty significant loads, so you’ve got to check that everything’s good to go before you head out and put it under load.”
Because the Black Foils are still owned by the league, SailGP will foot the bill for their repair, which Coutts said would cost the league “a fair amount”. For privately owned teams, the owners are expected to pay the cost of the repairs.
For the Kiwi team, their second major crash of the campaign likely ends their hopes of a season championship, as they are going to miss further opportunities to score points.
“The reality is they’re probably out of the season standings now,” Coutts said.
“It’s unfortunate. They’re obviously one of the top teams in the league and it’s a tragedy that that’s happened to them, but it’s sport. Sometimes you get the unexpected and unwanted situations in sport. They’re a good team, they’ll come back. They’ll come back and they’ll learn from this and they’ll build from it.”
The league next hits the water in Sydney in two weeks, which is too tight a window for either boat to be back on the water, before SailGP makes its debut in Rio de Janeiro in April. That would be a hopeful timeline for the French returning to action.
That is followed by Bermuda in mid-May and New York at the start of June. SailGP is currently building a new boat in preparation for its 14th team joining in 2027, and that is expected to be completed in June.
“Eventually, the league will have two spare boats at every event, so if you had a situation like that, they would be racing the next day in a different boat, [we’d] brand the boat up and so forth overnight,” Coutts said. ”But we’re not at that level yet. We’re still a relatively new sports property and we’ve got to get to that point, but that’s certainly what’s in the works at the moment.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.