SailGP Season 2 - Taranto Recap
Phil Robertson - SailGP Spain Helmsman
Taranto Sail Grand Prix 2021 - Recap
Training the Spanish kids
On the face of it, Taranto was a very positive experience for the team and I, however for me there were mixed feelings, as a competitor you judge your performance from how well you personally perform, not the end result. Finishing 2nd in Taranto and feeling like you didn’t “peak” or perform at the high levels we demand from ourselves, leaves a strange feeling. You’d expect to have sailed out of your skin to get there in this fleet of supercharged F50 catamarans, but I know there is so much more left in the tank.
I believe the strong result is testament to the speed that we have learnt to sail these boats. We are now focusing on the small details which is a great place to be.
Sail GP is an interesting beast. The time we are on site has been cut down dramatically meaning training time is scarce and the shore/technical teams work ferociously to get the boats on the water in time. This high intensity environment in the boat park looks like continuing, as the cost of having people and boats on site is big.
For the sailing team, we are there two days before we sail. The first full day is spent in quarantine waiting to receive a negative covid result before we go onsite, the next day we are into it.
Our typical daily routine on site starts at the base with lifting the boat and getting the foils in. This takes most of the team.
Once the foils are in, boat comes back down, rudders get put into the new swing down rudder system, fairings get screwed on around board cases, the Tech team do all the electronic, hydraulic and software prep and sign offs.
We have a 45min crane slot in the morning and evening which starts from 0800, with the last lift out around 1800. The prep before is close to an hour, with at least two hours of work after your lift out to get foils out and the boat prepped for the next day. I’m referring here to the sailor’s roles off the water as the shore and tech teams work most hours of the day to keep the boats up to standard.
The ‘crane in’ process is roughly 45mins with another 45mins once in the water to get the rudders down and everything checked and singed off for sailing. So in reality when you do a days sailing it is close to 12hours on sight with barley a spare second to debrief and analyse the day.
Training
Two goals were set for training. Work on the tough level two maneuvers and find consistency in our starting. We ticked off the first goal nicely and we seemed to be getting more consistent with our starts…...until we raced. Time to go back to the drawing board.
The level that the F50’s require to be sailed at to be even remotely competitive is being raised every day. Not only do you need to pull off a page full of maneuvers that are highly choreographed, you now need to be able to do them all with only three onboard!
We went through the three trainings days ticking most of our goals off, spending a lot of time trying new maneuvers and starting techniques, interestingly we covered 325km’s during our three days of training, our only problem was with one hydraulic ram breakage costing us two hours.
Race Day 1
The dawn of race day 1 brought a massive change to SailGP. It was announced in the morning that we will be sailing with a crew of three instead of the usual five. As a team with limited experience on the F50 this kind of played into our hands, as the helmsman suddenly has a lot more responsibility in sailing/flying the boat. Normally the experienced teams do a good job of relieving the helmsman of as many roles as possible so he can be more heads out looking for breeze and strategising. As we are a team with less experience onboard the helmsman tends to take on a lot more roles in sailing the boat, therefore sailing the boat with three crew instead of five came easier to us than other teams.
Race one we came off the line slow, a bad call at mark one and we found ourselves last. We sailed clean and fast around the course before we spotted a great left-hand shift up the last beat and picked off four boats up to finish 4th, a solid recovery from a nightmare start.
Race two we got off the line ok somewhere mid pack. Another good call up the first beat slid us into second and fighting for the lead. A well sailed second half of the race put us within a boat length of the win at the end, just missing out on victory. A solid 2nd gave us confidence in what we were doing.
Race three we took a boundary penalty with 2mins to go. Shook this off with two gybes (other option is two tacks) but was so far out of position and ended up 15 seconds late for the line and dead last! Once again, we picked our way through the fleet to lock in another solid 4th. The impressions on the day were that we are fast, maneuvering really well and had a good handle on the race course. We just needed to get off the line in good shape and we’d be battling for the wins.
Crane the boat out, wash it down, dry it, lift it in the shed, boards out, boat down, rudders off, clean + check foils, set up for maintenance, dinner, debrief, home to sleep.
Race Day 2 – back to five crew.
The plan was simple. Get a decent start and we’ll get a good result. Sitting in third overall with Four points to fourth place meant one good result and we’d have a good shot of making the final and achieve our objective.
The breeze was slightly better today. Still a light Mediterranean Sea breeze but promising enough to sail with five. Race four started like all the others, we made a hash of the start again and second to last at mark one.
Stay focused, pick them off. This time the fleet was a bit more spread out and we couldn’t come back.
Plan failed. Thankfully GBR and FRA who were close to us on points finished one in front and one behind.
Race five was do or die. Equal points now with NZL we had to beat them but not lose to many points on DEN and FRA.
The start plan, DON’T BE LATE. We’ll I made sure of this by setting up nice and early but old mate Nathan Outteridge thought it was a great idea to take us out instead of starting the race.
I guess it was a bit premeditated but he now knows team ESP owes him a beauty!
From here it was a long way back and NZL were in the top three. Keep it simple, nice maneuvers and keep the boat in the right part of the race track. We did this well and once NZL got given a penalty I knew we were on. A nice top mark lay line in pressure meant we were coming in hot and managed to roll them around the top mark. Now it was a tactical change to keep them behind, match race them. We had to keep a slight eye on the others but we matched them tack for tack and stayed within touch of DEN and FRA to book our spot in the final. Ugly way to get there but we were delighted.
Final
With the breeze dying and boats not foiling all the time with five crew members onboard, it was decided to be sailed with three. Ideal. We pulled the trigger a little early at the start but pulled off a great JK at the bottom mark to get back in touch with the leader USA. We had the split we wanted at the top mark and felt like we’d be in 2nd and on the tail of 1st. Unfortunately, a camera boat wanted the perfect shot from in front of us and gave us all his wash, right where we had to gybe.
This dropped us off the foil as we were dropping the board, which didn’t fire down properly due to the boat not foiling high enough. We picked ourselves up and got back going, but a nicely executed JK by JPN this time gave us few options, so we set up heading to the port boundary instead. The USA team had hit something in the water and broke their rudder, so we slipped past them. We gained a little at the top of the course and got close but it wasn’t enough.
Second place for the team was a great result. It didn’t feel like we sailed out of our skin, but we did enough to make the final and in a one-shot race, anything can happen in the win for the Cannoli. We made massive improvements in our boat handling over the week and our speed was good. Our decision making around the course was pulling us back and I had confidence to throw the boat around.
A solid week and the nice surprise of leading the series after the efforts.
