SailGP speed records and news, GGR skippers assembled, team racing news, Little Regina's rescue
by David Schmidt 25 Aug 12:00 PDT
August 25, 2026
Bonds Flying Roos win the Final - Day 2 - Rockwool Germany Sail Grand Prix - Sassnitz - August 23, 2026 © Andrew Baker/SailGP
SailGP notched another milestone in the evolution of sail- and foil-powered speed sailing this weekend at the Rockwool Germany Sail Grand Prix (August 22-23).
The regatta, which just wrapped up on the waters of the Baltic Sea off of Sassnitz, Germany, saw DS Automobiles SailGP Team France hit 58.11 knot (or 107.63 kilometers per hour in SailGP's preferred nomenclature) during the final bear-away maneuver of the final of three split-fleet group races on Saturday. Impressively, DS Automobiles SailGP Team France's new record beat the previous high-water mark of 56.11 knots (103.93 kilometers per hour), which was set by the Danish-flagged Rockwool Racing SailGP Team at this same event last year.
Clearly, Saturday's stormy, rainy conditions favored fast sailing, as Rockwool Racing SailGP Team posted a top speed of 57.66 knots (106.79 kilometers per hour) in the same race before suffering a high-speed nosedive.
For the French, the big moment came amidst a hair-on-fire leg.
"I was definitely on the edge and it was quite scary on that last bear-away," reported DS Automobiles SailGP Team France's driver, Quetin Delapierre, in a SailGP report. "I guess that's where we broke the record. It was quite a slow bear-away, so we were going really fast. I was just focusing on not putting too much pressure on Jason [Saunder's] foil so he could stay on the foil. At this speed, the first boundary comes up very quickly."
All teams were racing with the league's 18-meter wings and high-speed rudders and boards on Saturday, and while France and Denmark may have posted the fastest speeds in Group A's Race 3, these metrics were not enough to take the win, which in this case was earned by driver Diego Botin and his Los Gallos SailGP team.
This weekend's racing marks the third time that SailGP has employed split-fleet racing for an entire event (the other two being this year's Halifax and Portsmouth). At Sassnitz, the 13-strong fleet was split into Group A, which consisted of Spain, France, New Zealand, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, and Brazil, and Group B, which consisted of Germany, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, the USA, and Australia.
A total of ten group races (five each for Group A and Group B) delivered a four-strong Final race, which saw the Australian-flagged Bonds Flying Roos SailGP Team square off against the Canadian-flagged NorthStar SailGP Team, the Spanish-flagged Los Gallos SailGP Team, and the New Zealand-flagged Black Foils SailGP team.
Impressively, driver Tom Slingsby and his Bonds Flying Roos delivered a master class in F50 sailing, beating the second-placed NorthStar team across the winner-takes-all finishing line by about 600 meters. Los Gallos went on to claim the regatta's final podium position.
Looking broadly at the 2026 Season, the Flying Roos win in Sassnitz puts the Aussies in the pole position with a total of 76 points. Los Gallos, which won the 2024 Season, is currently in second place with 62 points, while the Swedish-flagged Artemis SailGP Team, which is a newcomer (of sorts) this season, is sitting in third place with 53 points.
"We definitely had to work for it, but that Final just came out firing," reported Slingsby in a SailGP communication. "There was massive déjà vu heading into it when the wind started shutting down—in race one we went from first to last, and then in the Final the wind started shutting down again. But we learned a lot of lessons in that first race about how to get the boat boiling and find the breeze quickly, and we managed to stay boiling all the way around the track."
The Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team, which won the SailGP's 2025 season trophy (and SailGP's 2025 Impact League trophy) is currently in fourth place with 46 points, tied on points with the resurgent U.S. SailGP Team, which is sitting in fifth place.
A glance at SailGP's 2026 calendar reveals four more currently scheduled events: The Spain Sail Grand Prix (September 5-6), the Rolex Switzerland Sail Grand Prix (September 19-20), the Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix (November 21-22), and the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Sail Grand Prix (November 28-29), the latter of which also serves as the 2026 Season Grand Final.
It is not yet known how the still-ongoing war in Iran might affect SailGP's final two 2026 events, but Sail-World has a candle lit that cool heads prevail in Washington D.C., and in Tehran, and that hostilities end quickly.
Meanwhile, shifting gears from wingsails and high-speed foils to a circumnavigation race that intentionally embraces retro boats and old-school technology comes news that 16 skippers and their classic yachts have now assembled in Les Sables-d'Olonne, France, ahead of the September 6 start of the 2026 Golden Globe Race.
This race recreates the seamanship challenges of the 1968-1969 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. As such, sailors competing in the 2026 edition must race aboard period-compliant boats using race-approved technologies (read: sextants and paper charts, not Expedition and PredictWind). This week marks the final safety checks that all competing skippers and yachts must undergo before the start of a race that could easily take nine months to complete.
As of this writing, North American interests are being represented by Isa Rosli (Canada) Guy deBoer (USA), Matt Woodside (USA), and Gunnar Chistensen (USA).
Sail-World wishes all 16 2026 GGR contestants safe passage as they wend their way around our lonely planet, and we look forward to following the racecourse drama (and Southern Ocean GRIB files) once racing begins.
Seabirds might be a common sight offshore, however the crew aboard Fujitsu British Soldier, a Sun Fast 3600 racing in the RORC Round Britain and Ireland Race, picked up an unexpected passenger when a barn owl joined the crew some 70 nautical miles east of Newcastle.
"We have an extra crew member for the latter parts of the race," reported skipper Will Naylor in a race communication. "An exhausted barn owl that we are nursing back to health. It's currently sleeping soundly and recovering."
According to reports, the tired owl first tried to land atop a crewmember's head before repeatedly attempting to catch a perch on the yacht's mast head, the latter of which resulted in three drops into the drink. Fortunately, the crew got the owl, which they nicknamed "Little Reg" (later, "Little Regina", after they determined that he was a she), aboard their boat, and they were successfully able to transfer her to the Caister Lifeboat team, which brought her ashore.
Finally, much closer to home, the Texas Corinthian Yacht Club, which is based in Kemah, Texas, has won the New York Yacht Club Grandmaster Team Race (August 21-23), which was contested on the waters off of Newport, Rhode Island in conditions that were gusting into the 20s.
The winning TCYC teams consisted of skipper Gerard Coleman, Marjorie Crawford, Sam Pyne, Randy Roberston, skipper and team captain Gary Ross, Ann Graham, Joel Scott, Chris Stacy, skipper Clark Thompson, Mary Milby, Pierce Owens, and Paul Thompson, who beat out beat out teams from Seawanhaka Corinthean Yacht Club and the Ida Lewis Yacht Club, which finished the regatta in second and third place.
"Galveston Bay is typically 15 to 17 knots of sea breeze with chop, so we have a lot more experience with that," said Coleman in a regatta communication. "The light air is challenging for many reasons. The lighter the air, the more difficult racing becomes for us."
Impressively, this win represents the TCYC's fourth time winning the NYYC's Grandmaster Team Race in the last six years.
"We have a very small team of team racers at our club, which is also very small by comparison," said Paul Thompson in a regatta communication. "So, we're fortunate to have a lot of people behind this. Our boats are individually owned, and our owners are very gracious to make them available for the team racers to use for practice. And our club gets behind us. We've gotten text messages from people the entire weekend. It's not just the people that are here. It's truly a club effort."
Sail-World tips out hat to the TCYC teams for their proud win at the Grandmaster Team Race, and we encourage everyone to get out racing as much as possible before summer's slowly ebbs its way into fall.
May the four winds blow you safely home.
David Schmidt
Sail-World.com North American Editor