Nathan Outteridge has put together a strong team for Artemis Sweden's first campaign in SailGP. Photo / SailGP
By Christopher Reive in Perth
The drought is about to end for Nathan Outteridge.
When he leads SailGP newcomers Artemis Sweden out onto the water in Perth this weekend, it will be his first competitive racing since late October 2024 when Emirates Team New Zealand won the America’s Cup.
With no fulltime role in SailGP for season five, the 39-year-old opted to take a year off to go cruising with his family, resetting and refreshing before jumping back into the America’s Cup scene.
It was a decision that ultimately saw him find a new home – or, rather, return to a familiar one – on the water for the 2026 SailGP campaign after crossing paths with Artemis boss Torbjorn Tornqvist in the Caribbean.
“Right place, right time, which is exactly how I joined the team in the lead up to the America’s Cup in San Francisco,” Outteridge said. “Right place, right time and here we are again.”
Outteridge’s involvement in SailGP might have surprised some after he was named to succeed Peter Burling as skipper for Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup. Burling and Team NZ parted ways after three successful campaigns, with the helmsman noting Team NZ wanted more control over his schedule which would likely have hindered his role as Black Foils SailGP driver as a factor in that.
Outteridge, a two-time SailGP runner-up with the now-defunct Japanese team, said he had discussions with Team NZ about how the two roles could intertwine and the fact he hasn’t done any racing since the last America’s Cup meant Team NZ management Grant Dalton and Kevin Shoebridge were keen to see him back in elite competition.
“One of the things that Dalts [Dalton] and Shoeb [Shoebridge] said to me is that we really want you to come back and start racing again. Given there’s very little racing in the Cup, they were really supportive of me doing SailGP, but they just wanted to make sure the priority was with Team New Zealand when it comes to it for the America’s Cup,” Outteridge explained.
“Ultimately, I signed up to do Team New Zealand again before this opportunity at SailGP came up. So I went through all the processes with Shoeb and Dalts to make sure that they were on board with this and they were really supportive and said so long as, you know, if push comes to shove, I’ll be at the Cup rather than at SailGP, they were supportive of that.”
Now, Outteridge returns to a league in which he has had plenty of success with a new team, but one that has plenty of experience in the F50 foiling catamarans as well as sailing alongside each other.
As part of his recruitment drive for Artemis, Outteridge said Team NZ America’s Cup teammates Andy Maloney (flight controller) and Chris Draper (wing trimmer) were two key hires, signed from Brazil and Australia, respectively. Both are hugely experienced SailGP sailors and both have sailed with Outteridge in top-level competition before, while fellow Team NZ America’s Cup sailor Sam Meech joined as coach after working with the Black Foils in season five.
Artemis also signed Brad Farrand, a Kiwi who qualifies as a Swedish national in SailGP, as well as Swedish sailors Julia Gross and Julius Hallstrom. Every member of the team has at least one year of SailGP under their belts, giving them a much higher starting point than previous teams joining the league have had.
“Once we got Chris and Andy involved and I started the conversations happening elsewhere, it was lots of Swedes jumping at opportunities to get involved and we got some really good reserve sailors from the Youth America’s Cup programme as well,” Outteridge said.
“We’re really happy with the group we’ve got, but we need to start working out how we operate together as a team and hopefully that happens quickly so that we can be competitive really quickly.”
Perth serves to be the perfect testing ground for exactly where they’re at as a team. While this weekend’s event is SailGP’s first in the city, it shapes up as one of the windier venues on the calendar.
While Outteridge has had success in the league previously, he returns after a host of SailGP upgrades which have seen the boats add a bit more pace to their arsenal.
“The performance of the boat is so much higher than it used to be,” he said.
“We would all love to be on podiums regularly, but I think the ultimate goal is being as consistent as we can in the top half of the fleet. If we could make the final at the end of the year, that’d be a huge achievement and if we could make some finals along the way, that would be great.
“But, you know, we’ve just got to walk before we run and run before we sprint, so this is the first weekend on what I think will be a long journey here.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.