Rolex Fastnet: Peter Burling on his new sailing directions in Europe

Peter Burling, co-CEO and driver of New Zealand SailGP Team, Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix - June 5, 2025 © Ricardo Pinto/SailGP

Peter Burling, three times America’s Cup winning helmsman, and recently departed Emirates Team NZ has embarked on his mid-life sailing renaissance.

This week in Cowes – he is covering two of those events – sailing in the SailGP Portsmouth event on Saturday and Sunday. A week later he steps aboard the 100ft maxi trimaran SVR-Lazartigue, skippered by Tom Laperche for the 100th edition of the Rolex Fastnet Race.

SVR-Lazartigue, is one of four of the magnificent 105ft Ultimfoiling trimarans competing, and set the course record in the 2023 Fastnet in 2023, chopping out the new 695nm course in 32 hours, 38 minutes – an average speed of just 21kts.

However most fan interest is still focussed on Burling’s split with Emirates Team NZ and his subsequent signing with long-time Emirates Team NZ rival Luna Rossa.

With the strong possibility that the current challenger Royal Yacht Squadron/Athen Racing will soon be ousted from their role as Challenger of Record, either a French or Italian club/team is expected to step into those vacated shoes for the 39th Match for the most prestigious trophy in sailing.

Despite recent news reports in New Zealand that Burling and his family are looking forward to living in Sardinia, where Luna Rossa are based, Burling revealed little about his domestic intentions, saying: “physically, I'm in Europe now, right?” Before the body-language shutters closed on that subject.

He was a little more forthcoming on his relationship with Luna Rossa, given that he was hired without a position in mind, and couldn’t under the America’s Cup draft Protocol, take the helm of the Italian Challenger.

“Luna Rossa has been incredibly supportive the whole process,” he said. “It’s really cool to see how it’s all unfolding. I think the cups in interesting place, but it’s between Ben and Dalts. Nothing to do with me - I'm out of there!”

After the last Cup Luna Rossa made it clear that their helming line-up was going to be based around too new helmsman – double Olympic Gold Medalist Ruggero Tita, and four-time World Optimist champion Max Gradoni.

Tita is the skipper of the Italian SailGP entry, backed by Red Bull. Our next question was around whether Burling would work directly with Tita in particular to share learnings as they raced against each other in the 12 event Season 6 SailGP regattas, given that Tita for all his Olympic Gold has a steep learning curve ahead of him in both SailGP and America’s Cup.

“The Cup’s just a wait and see. This weekend, we're all about here in Portsmouth, building up to this SailGP event.

“We’re super excited, by the way, that they've managed to combine the two (Admirals’ Cup and Rolex Fastnet with SailGP Portsmouth). I think it's massively beneficial for my sailing, seeing the way the SailGP's continued to grow, and the Black Foils, we're continuing to build event on events. With Auckland went back on the SailGP calendar, it's gonna be awesome to have that home event again.”

Turning to his upcoming gig sailing with some of the rockstars of French offshore racing, Burling is keen to get on stage with that iconic group.

“I love Offshore Sailing. We’ve done a a short training commitment doing the a couple days training with him, and then we jump in for the Fastnet.”

“But the Ultims are such cool boats right offshore.

“We did a 24 hour run the other day through the English Channel, and got to see them in some decent seaway and a bit of breeze. It is pretty cool to see how many miles they can cover in that kind of environment, which is pretty, pretty incredible."

“Well, I think peak speeds are really staggering. For what we used to doing. “Being able to average over 40 knots in big waves is pretty cool in challenging. They are super cool boats.”

Asked how his foiling AC75 and F50 experience crosses over into the 105ft foiling Ultim, Burling says they are all coming off the same base.

“We're using a foil to try and decrease the drag of the boat and smooth out the peaks and the troughs of the speed. “But, it’s incredibly different in other ways. Obviously the offshore boat, is set up to be stable. The Ultims are also set up to be sailed two or single handed - so you've got to be able to do that without moving anything. “Once you get the autopilot dialed in, it’s a question of monitoring systems. You're not kind of actively, and continually having to move surfaces to make all work, which is, I think, is the polar opposite to an F 50 or a Cup boat where you're continually having to tweak things to make sure it's going fast."

“Obviously offshore as well, the Ultim is not really prioritized to perform in the maneuvers, it is more prioritised for straight line sailing."

“But yeah, it's been a great to work with typical group with Tom [Laperche ], Frank [Cammas] and the rest of the team. It's good opportunity to connect back in with that world.”