SailGP: Artemis is the 13th team to join SailGP. Outteridge will be helmsman
by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World.com/nz 19 Sep 01:16 PDT
Artemis Racing chases Emirates Team New Zealand - leg 4 - Race 7 - Finals, America's Cup Playoffs- Day 15, June 12, 2017 (ADT) © Richard Gladwell
SailGP CEO Russell Coutts has announced that the Swedish team Artemis is the 13th team to join the SailGP League. The team will be led by Iain Percy who was skipper of the team in the Artemis Racing team in the 2017 America's Cup.
The helmsman will be Nathan Outteridge, currently a co-helmsman with Emirates Team New Zealand.
The team will enter Season 6, which kicks off in Perth in January.
Both Outteridge and Percy are Olympic Gold medallists, Outteridge in the 49er in 2012, and Percy in the Finn class in 2004, and again in the Star class in 2008.
The team, like the 2017 America's Cup team, will be backed by Torbjörn Törnqvist, co-founder and long-time leader of Gunvor Group, a major global commodity trading company.
Outteridge was helmsman of the Swedish America's Cup in Bermuda, where he helmed the then AC50, which evolved after the America's Cup into the F50 used by SailGP. – confirmed as driver for Artemis SailGP Team. He also helmed the startup Japan SailGP Team in Seasons 1 and 2 of SailGP as well as several stand-in roles for other SailGP teams.
In the SailGP League, he will come up against his co-helmsman in the 2024 America's Cup, Peter Burling.
Burling left Emirates Team New Zealand earlier this year to join the Luna Rossa America's Cup team, leaving Outteridge to step into the skipper's shoes.
After Burling's departure from the America's Cup Defender, ETNZ CEO Grant Dalton made the comment that he couldn't see how an America's Cup helmsman could work across both SailGP and America's Cup commitments. However, now one of the designated helmsmen has made a similar move.
Other team members, including Flight Controller Blair Tuke, Sam Meech, Chris Draper and Andy Maloney are sailing in both SailGP and America's Cup teams. Dalton made the comment after Burling's departure that it was easier to work around the occasional lack of availability of crew other than the helmsmen, presumably, as in testing, the flight control function is handled by an autopilot to give testing consistency.
However at the time Dalton made those comments the final version of the Protocol governing the America's Cup in Naples, was not negotiated and the decision had not yet been made to reuse AC75s from the 2024 America's Cup.
But in the intervening weeks, SailGP has published an expanded program for Season 6, with essentially an event almost every month, except for December, SailGP is beginning to set the training and testing program for the Defender, and some of the Challengers. The conflict is expected to tighten in the Cup year of 2027, with the League likely to expand to 14 events, and 14 teams.
Currently, Outteridge is sailing back to New Zealand from Europe, and broke the trip in Tonga to travel to Geneva for the SailGP announcement.