SailGP: F50's sent for wingsail checks
by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World.com/nz 10 Apr 17:20 AEST
Australia drop their wingsail - pre-start - Race 7 - Race Day 2- Oracle San Francisco SailGP - March 23, 2025 - San Francisco © Simon Bruty/SailGP
Reports by Brazilian newspaper OGlobo's website that the SailGP fleet has been diverted "to a shipyard" for wingsail checks, have been confirmed.
The Brazil SailGP event has been cancelled. The event, the first in Brazil was scheduled to take place from May 3-4.
Writing in the century old newspaper, Lauro Jardim reports: "The cancellation was due to an accident during the San Francisco stage in California, where the Australian boat suffered a broken mast. As a precautionary measure, the organization decided to send all vessels to a shipyard to check for possible structural failures"
In an official statement issued by the League over 12hrs after the appearance of the story, SailGP CEO Russell Coutts said:
"After thorough review, our engineers and technicians have discovered an issue with the bonding of the core material in the shear web of some of the wingsails, which could potentially compromise the structural integrity of those wingsails. As such, we've made the prudent choice to suspend next month's event, giving us sufficient time to complete repairs and conduct any further investigations."
Three wingsails have collapsed inside 12 months, with no report on the failures issued by SailGP. The F50s have three sizes of wingsail - 18m, 24m and 32m. The bottom section is constant in all three with the other heights being achieved by adding sections.
The first to collapse was the Black Foils (NZ) in St Tropez in mid-2024, when the big 32m rig toppled under no real load after a race. The second was Martine Grael's Brazil SailGP F50 at a training session in Bermuda. Tom Slingsby's Flying Roos dropped their wingsail after a sharp luff to starboard during the San Franciso SailGP. As a fleet, the F50s were fitted with new T-Foils in January 2025.
To date no-one has been injured by the collapsing wingsails.
Several wingsails were damaged in an incident when a wingsail was caught in a violent gust of wind, as it was being lifted off the F50, in Sydney in January 2024 . The rogue wingsail did a lot of damage, striking a tent being used to store other wingsails.
The F50 wingsailed catamarans were designed and developed for the 2017 America's Cup in Bermuda, with most being built at the Core Builders Composites facility at Warkworth about an hour north of Auckland, NZ. The current fleet of 12 consists of a mix of new boats built for SailGP, or others repurposed from the 2017 America's Cup. The latest addition to the fleet was the former Emirates Team NZ America's Cup winner, built by the New Zealand team.