Halifax Had It All! Passionate Crowds, Close Calls, Near Misses and a Capsize for Australia
Jun 11, 2024
Canada won a race adding to the home team’s exciting Halifax showing at Canada’s first SailGP event but it was Emirates GBR which weathered the storm, rising to the top of fleet racing to go head to head against France and ROCKWOOL DEN in the three-boat showdown. The winners battled through some of the most challenging conditions in SailGP history, navigating high winds and driving rain to cross the finish line and seal Giles Scott’s first ever win as driver.
The high tech F50s are super-complex and that means things cango wrong. A ‘technical malfunction’ was behind Australia’s dramatic capsize on the second day of racing in Halifax, it has been revealed. The Aussie F50 keeled over during the last upwind leg of the fifth fleet race, creating confusion amongst the team.
Speaking after racing, driver Tom Slingsby said he was ‘as shocked as anyone’ about the incident and immediately attributed it to a technical problem on board. “A button was stuck and the boat thought we were pressing a button but no-one was pressing a button,” he said.
An ‘initial assessment’ by SailGP’s Tech Team has since ‘confirmed the capsize was caused by a technical malfunction’, specifically of the grinder cockpit panel system.
The incident followed an earlier near capsize in the fourth fleet race. “We were equal in the lead with Canada and the wing didn’t invert in one of the tacks,” Slingsby said. The team managed to prevent the capsize in the nick of time and debriefed the incident as ‘human error’.
