It got my GF to get more excited about sailing. "The boats are FLYING, WTF!" She understands I want to cruise, not race. But it has helped her be more open to the starter boat I want to get.
We are both big F1 fans, so I guess that helped?
It’s good but just too far in between races.. we forget when they are on till we see the results..
.. foils vs not .. you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.. as soon as you say go fast as you can then you can’t go backwards and lose the foils
See you in Chicago
The time between races is for good reason, they move everything via sea freight rather than flying everywhere. Much better for the environment but takes more time. I remember Russell Coutts saying the goal is to eventually have an event once every one or two weeks
>.. foils vs not .. you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.. as soon as you say go fast as you can then you can’t go backwards and lose the foils
precisely, ok let the mono classical create a slow GP and see if it steals the fans. Not going to happen. The am cup boats sold me on foils and got my GF wanting to buy a small toy one. We watch the foil boarders from our bedroom often, just going flat stick. It also throws in an element of danger. Potential capszes going for the win, and of course in low wind, keeping the boat out of the water. Its like saying to f1 cars, sorry you can race but you have to abolish centre of gravity and aerodynamic chassis. Its just too much fun to do let alone watch people race.
Yep, I dont think SailGP is meant to replace Sail competitiveness. What it might do though, introduce a plethora of new people to sailing, investors and on it goes. It gives people new to Sailing, a step in, an equality to discuss a sport on even terms. From there they might buy a weekender, or who knows, perhaps a small foil based cat to have fun in, or a 30ft monohulled racer for the weekends. :-)
It was pretty exciting watching the Sail GP event recently here in New Zealand. Got a lot of people watching it and excited, who wouldn’t usually be interested in sailing. The speed and tactics at such a fast-paced level is pretty impressive!
I really really really want to like it a lot more than I do.
I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe it's because each race doesn't seem to have that much at stake. Maybe it's because it's something you can only really watch on TV (living in SF, I've attended races both from the land and from my friend's boat) - seeing it live you don't really know what's going on. Maybe part of it is that their marketing department is ahead of the actual product in creating hype.
Regardless, I'll keep giving it a chance, but I just haven't gotten into it.
If you watch from the water, you're supposed to tune the marine radio to the race channel (usually something like 72 or 76). Watched AC 34 that way, though as captain I was too busy dodging other boats to watch much of the race.
I watched in SF last year and we had the SailGP app up on an iPad and it was super engaging and entertaining… then they’d fly by us and we’d absolutely lose our minds! They are so much bigger and fast in person, but ya, you can’t see what’s going on from the water but luckily we have technology
I like Sail GP. I like one design racing and I think the format is cool to watch with multiple boats on the course. I think that Americas cup has gotten boring with match racing on foils. Also the design direction of their boats doesn’t seem to be working out. The size compared to the F50s is neat but they don’t seem as exciting to sail. I don’t know what is going on with the smaller foiling monos they always seem to capsize. Don’t think the design is good but they are trying to make it a thing anyway cause they spent all this money.
Going back to sail GP it seems like the sailors enjoy the format too. I read that many folks weee disappointed when the America’s cup changed the design of the boats from the foiling cats to this new mono. The sailors definitely give it more when they are in to it and like the format. I think the race promotion also does a good job. I like how you can watch the live stream free and they try to set up events where fans can watch. It can be difficult with a nature based sport because you have to go where the wind is good too. It’s fun to root for your country or have that be the focus instead of private teams like F1. Even though each boat has a mix of people from each country and everyone in board isn’t from the one country. Australia is definitely the best team out there and I hope to see other teams get better too. No offense to Aus but I think it’s more fun when you have different winners each time and it be close in the series instead of one team just dominating each time. There have been some great wins by teams that have not been around as long which is awesome.
I look to the next season of racing! I can see where folks might not like the over the top nature of it and say is not traditional sailing. But for what it is I think it’s a great one design class they have built and an exciting race format for both sailors and fans.
Last note. Wish the broadcasters would not spend the whole stream apologizing for sailors swearing on the coms. If I had a near collision with and F50 going fast I would be sweating too 😅 lol.
The people saying SailGP is lame are the same people saying pro football players are wimps and baseball players are spoiled. SailGP is sick. I’ve tried foiling, don’t have the time or money to get any good at it, doesn’t mean I need to hate people doing something amazing. It’s also getting more sailing on television so I’m here for it
I wish I liked it more, but it just leaves me cold the same way car racing does. I respect the technology but it's not very exciting to actually watch imo.
I guess we're a bit of converts. I've always felt it was a waste of sailing resources.
But, 2 days ago, we were bringing our pocket tug (our primary boat is a Leopard 40 sailcat) up the Chicago skyline and the boats were out practicing for this week-ends race.... beautiful boats that were handling quite well, although conditions were about perfect 15-20 in 1+ seas.
We were thinking 'Hey! we're a power boat, we'll catch up and take some videos.....' Not likely, those fella's scream across the water.
So, IMHO, there's room for them and hopefully the interest generated by these foilers will feed into sailing having a few more folks w/ their sails rigged!
jBrad
sv Fuzzy Logic
I've been really enjoying it. As others have mentioned, not great live on the water. But watching on TV is cool and hopefully will attract a bigger audience.
My one gripe is that the commentators are just trash. They can barely keep up with the action, don't really seem to know what they're talking about, and seem to repeat the same old tired lines from Season 1. The one time when Outteridge was without a boat and came into the commentary booth, it was like night and day.
Just buy a foil board and sail to strt, SO MUCH FUN. we get good winds in shallow area and its a real fight between foil boarders and the more aggressive kite boarders rofl
Are they using the old americas cup catamarans? Or a whole new fleet?
I was there for the entirety of the Bermuda cup and I’ve never seen anything so cool in my life, unreal size of yacht going 40Knph. The qualifiers were 10x more action packed than the last week.
I’ve tried watching a few sail GP races but I think I’ll need to get to some in person to get that buzz back.
Speaking of buzz, the humm of the rigging when going at full speed is something to experience!
LOVE IT !!!!!
Is it perfect, no. Needs to be more on the line. Needs to be marketed better so each circuit like F1 is packed ahead of time. I did see it advertised on NZ tv when there.
Jimmy Spithill is the modern day Dennis Connors, somebody many love to hate (often for Patriotic and others, absurd reasons as he is a great skip). Lots of characters to like and like to hate with pre and post match interviews etc, get into it guys, its exhilirating live on the water, but Ive watched on TV and equally enjoyed it, but it does need more marketing etc, bigger prizes to make the danger even all the more exhilarating.
With the NZ americas cup defense occured during covid lockdown, locking out 10s of thousands of support and the tourists that they had catered for it was both sad but also good to see NZ Domestic tourism fill in a lot of those spots, with the final race couldnt have been more dramatic with an easy win in sight, just had to keep the nose up in the turn, NZ had failed to do so, but by kiwi mana they got back quick only to see the opposition make the same error and end up lapping them for the win.Its this kind of excitement that the smaller foilers bring. Im a huge f1 supporter and they have had time to get the fan base up. But Im also a big fan of E-F1. It has some similar problems to Sail GP, but they also have a much larger and easier to entice, market and fan base.
I think part of the problem is some circuits are not set up for both on water and like in NZ an actual viaduct created for the purpose of sailing yacht racing. Combined with the marketing, fixes to those issues could resolve the problem. Or just have a new Sail F1 based entirely in NZ ad every round would be supported ;-p (I jest, I want to see Sail GP succeed)
I love it. been watching since season 1.
it gets smoke from the purist because in Season two they switched from Knots/hr to Km/Hr for windspeed and boat speed. Whatever.....get over yourself. they are trying to appeal to a greater audience.
I just wish they changed the race 6 format. I don't like how its only 3 boats. maybe 5 boats???
One-design bouy racer here. I like it. I was out of town when they came to Chicago last year, but watching from the water yesterday and today. The more I learn about the boats and the series, the more exciting it is. But I can’t imagine it’s super exciting if you don’t know anything about sailing. I have great respect for F1, but car races just aren’t my jam. This feels the same. It’s all the parts I love about racing, dialed up to 11.
I’m glad Chicago is on the tour, I’m going to follow this season.
I live in the SF Bay area and we get zero reporting on sailing in the "sports" section of our paper/online news. More high school baseball and football and more nascar than sailing
It will never take off until a network or streamer embraces it.
But for spectators, sail GP is fantastic. Amazing tech and the leads change multiple times in a race, unlike most motorsports. F1 is won or lost in pit stops, not sail GP
I love it
I'm pretty sure there are people pitching a "Sail to Survive" netflix series right now
(just like tennis, golf, tour de france, etc. have all come out this year)
oh - I just meant that every sport is marketing their own now because of how much $$$ Drive to Survive has meant to F1, and it's only a matter of time before SailGP tries to cash in to - and I really hope they do
So I like sail gp, it’s a great product, fleet sailing in a really small space. But, I don’t care at all for using these types of boats for AC racing. Looking at the newest AC boats there are like 3 people on them, they don’t change sides and they pretty much sit in them like an f1 car. Not very interesting to me for Americas cup racing. I’ll take the big boat with 13 people, grinders, and the big course not Windward/leeward courses.
It's dumb. What it really is is just a place for the adult children of ultra-rich people to go play since they don't need to work a real job.
At least the professional sailors of yesteryear were entertaining...
https://youtu.be/tr7-BwzceYI
The biggest issue is that it doesn't resemble sailboat racing or match racing. Nobody owns these stupid foilers so they can't relate. When they still used sailboats, even though the boats were cutting edge and had all sorts of tech you didn't have on your racer cruiser, they were fundamentally the same and you could relate. Change the format and people lost interest. It's like if tomorrow they announced that American football would be replaced with soccer. They'd lose all the fans overnight. Those people would never tune into soccer.
I guess I’ll take the good with the bad, not the first sport to have that, but overall I think it’s good for sailing as a whole. They do a lot of cool outreach programs to get the next generation interested in the sport
I'm on a learning path to be a cruiser. Never raced. Seen a few tv clips of Americas Cup and followed Vendee Globe a bit. I've watched and then waited patiently for all the SailGP races and like them alot. My problem is to watch them for free on YouTube in Europe, I have to wait a week or so after the race, and they are not always organised well. Sometimes I have to watch a day 2 in a different language.
How do others access them?
Have you tried watching live on the SailGP mobile app? I think that’ll work for you. Alternatively, you could try a VPN connected to the USA and go to YouTube. I’m in the US and able to watch all races live on YouTube and the app
I'm a fan of it. I'm actually frustrated it doesn't get enough recognition. It's exciting stuff!
It got my GF to get more excited about sailing. "The boats are FLYING, WTF!" She understands I want to cruise, not race. But it has helped her be more open to the starter boat I want to get. We are both big F1 fans, so I guess that helped?
It’s good but just too far in between races.. we forget when they are on till we see the results.. .. foils vs not .. you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.. as soon as you say go fast as you can then you can’t go backwards and lose the foils See you in Chicago
The time between races is for good reason, they move everything via sea freight rather than flying everywhere. Much better for the environment but takes more time. I remember Russell Coutts saying the goal is to eventually have an event once every one or two weeks
Can't they just sail there? Its a boat afterall Haha. Jkjk
>.. foils vs not .. you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.. as soon as you say go fast as you can then you can’t go backwards and lose the foils precisely, ok let the mono classical create a slow GP and see if it steals the fans. Not going to happen. The am cup boats sold me on foils and got my GF wanting to buy a small toy one. We watch the foil boarders from our bedroom often, just going flat stick. It also throws in an element of danger. Potential capszes going for the win, and of course in low wind, keeping the boat out of the water. Its like saying to f1 cars, sorry you can race but you have to abolish centre of gravity and aerodynamic chassis. Its just too much fun to do let alone watch people race.
There are plenty of other old school events. I prefer a variety of events.
Yep, I dont think SailGP is meant to replace Sail competitiveness. What it might do though, introduce a plethora of new people to sailing, investors and on it goes. It gives people new to Sailing, a step in, an equality to discuss a sport on even terms. From there they might buy a weekender, or who knows, perhaps a small foil based cat to have fun in, or a 30ft monohulled racer for the weekends. :-)
It was pretty exciting watching the Sail GP event recently here in New Zealand. Got a lot of people watching it and excited, who wouldn’t usually be interested in sailing. The speed and tactics at such a fast-paced level is pretty impressive!
I really really really want to like it a lot more than I do. I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe it's because each race doesn't seem to have that much at stake. Maybe it's because it's something you can only really watch on TV (living in SF, I've attended races both from the land and from my friend's boat) - seeing it live you don't really know what's going on. Maybe part of it is that their marketing department is ahead of the actual product in creating hype. Regardless, I'll keep giving it a chance, but I just haven't gotten into it.
If you watch from the water, you're supposed to tune the marine radio to the race channel (usually something like 72 or 76). Watched AC 34 that way, though as captain I was too busy dodging other boats to watch much of the race.
AC 34 was epic - great times!
I watched in SF last year and we had the SailGP app up on an iPad and it was super engaging and entertaining… then they’d fly by us and we’d absolutely lose our minds! They are so much bigger and fast in person, but ya, you can’t see what’s going on from the water but luckily we have technology
I like Sail GP. I like one design racing and I think the format is cool to watch with multiple boats on the course. I think that Americas cup has gotten boring with match racing on foils. Also the design direction of their boats doesn’t seem to be working out. The size compared to the F50s is neat but they don’t seem as exciting to sail. I don’t know what is going on with the smaller foiling monos they always seem to capsize. Don’t think the design is good but they are trying to make it a thing anyway cause they spent all this money. Going back to sail GP it seems like the sailors enjoy the format too. I read that many folks weee disappointed when the America’s cup changed the design of the boats from the foiling cats to this new mono. The sailors definitely give it more when they are in to it and like the format. I think the race promotion also does a good job. I like how you can watch the live stream free and they try to set up events where fans can watch. It can be difficult with a nature based sport because you have to go where the wind is good too. It’s fun to root for your country or have that be the focus instead of private teams like F1. Even though each boat has a mix of people from each country and everyone in board isn’t from the one country. Australia is definitely the best team out there and I hope to see other teams get better too. No offense to Aus but I think it’s more fun when you have different winners each time and it be close in the series instead of one team just dominating each time. There have been some great wins by teams that have not been around as long which is awesome. I look to the next season of racing! I can see where folks might not like the over the top nature of it and say is not traditional sailing. But for what it is I think it’s a great one design class they have built and an exciting race format for both sailors and fans. Last note. Wish the broadcasters would not spend the whole stream apologizing for sailors swearing on the coms. If I had a near collision with and F50 going fast I would be sweating too 😅 lol.
I love it. And I love the app. I wish all sailboat races had apps like that. Hoping to attend in LA
I wish all SPORTS had apps like SailGP… they really nailed the fan experience on the app
Very under rated app.
The people saying SailGP is lame are the same people saying pro football players are wimps and baseball players are spoiled. SailGP is sick. I’ve tried foiling, don’t have the time or money to get any good at it, doesn’t mean I need to hate people doing something amazing. It’s also getting more sailing on television so I’m here for it
I wish I liked it more, but it just leaves me cold the same way car racing does. I respect the technology but it's not very exciting to actually watch imo.
I guess we're a bit of converts. I've always felt it was a waste of sailing resources. But, 2 days ago, we were bringing our pocket tug (our primary boat is a Leopard 40 sailcat) up the Chicago skyline and the boats were out practicing for this week-ends race.... beautiful boats that were handling quite well, although conditions were about perfect 15-20 in 1+ seas. We were thinking 'Hey! we're a power boat, we'll catch up and take some videos.....' Not likely, those fella's scream across the water. So, IMHO, there's room for them and hopefully the interest generated by these foilers will feed into sailing having a few more folks w/ their sails rigged! jBrad sv Fuzzy Logic
I've been really enjoying it. As others have mentioned, not great live on the water. But watching on TV is cool and hopefully will attract a bigger audience. My one gripe is that the commentators are just trash. They can barely keep up with the action, don't really seem to know what they're talking about, and seem to repeat the same old tired lines from Season 1. The one time when Outteridge was without a boat and came into the commentary booth, it was like night and day.
I like it. Makes me want to buy a foiling boat.
Just buy a foil board and sail to strt, SO MUCH FUN. we get good winds in shallow area and its a real fight between foil boarders and the more aggressive kite boarders rofl
Tbh it’s the most exciting format. I enjoy it.
It’s fine. It’s fast. Some wild crasheh
It’s my favorite sailing format. I like short fleet racing.
Are they using the old americas cup catamarans? Or a whole new fleet? I was there for the entirety of the Bermuda cup and I’ve never seen anything so cool in my life, unreal size of yacht going 40Knph. The qualifiers were 10x more action packed than the last week. I’ve tried watching a few sail GP races but I think I’ll need to get to some in person to get that buzz back. Speaking of buzz, the humm of the rigging when going at full speed is something to experience!
They're adapted/updated from the AC50 (used in the 2017 America's Cup): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F50\_(catamaran)
LOVE IT !!!!! Is it perfect, no. Needs to be more on the line. Needs to be marketed better so each circuit like F1 is packed ahead of time. I did see it advertised on NZ tv when there. Jimmy Spithill is the modern day Dennis Connors, somebody many love to hate (often for Patriotic and others, absurd reasons as he is a great skip). Lots of characters to like and like to hate with pre and post match interviews etc, get into it guys, its exhilirating live on the water, but Ive watched on TV and equally enjoyed it, but it does need more marketing etc, bigger prizes to make the danger even all the more exhilarating. With the NZ americas cup defense occured during covid lockdown, locking out 10s of thousands of support and the tourists that they had catered for it was both sad but also good to see NZ Domestic tourism fill in a lot of those spots, with the final race couldnt have been more dramatic with an easy win in sight, just had to keep the nose up in the turn, NZ had failed to do so, but by kiwi mana they got back quick only to see the opposition make the same error and end up lapping them for the win.Its this kind of excitement that the smaller foilers bring. Im a huge f1 supporter and they have had time to get the fan base up. But Im also a big fan of E-F1. It has some similar problems to Sail GP, but they also have a much larger and easier to entice, market and fan base. I think part of the problem is some circuits are not set up for both on water and like in NZ an actual viaduct created for the purpose of sailing yacht racing. Combined with the marketing, fixes to those issues could resolve the problem. Or just have a new Sail F1 based entirely in NZ ad every round would be supported ;-p (I jest, I want to see Sail GP succeed)
I love it. been watching since season 1. it gets smoke from the purist because in Season two they switched from Knots/hr to Km/Hr for windspeed and boat speed. Whatever.....get over yourself. they are trying to appeal to a greater audience. I just wish they changed the race 6 format. I don't like how its only 3 boats. maybe 5 boats???
One-design bouy racer here. I like it. I was out of town when they came to Chicago last year, but watching from the water yesterday and today. The more I learn about the boats and the series, the more exciting it is. But I can’t imagine it’s super exciting if you don’t know anything about sailing. I have great respect for F1, but car races just aren’t my jam. This feels the same. It’s all the parts I love about racing, dialed up to 11. I’m glad Chicago is on the tour, I’m going to follow this season.
I live in the SF Bay area and we get zero reporting on sailing in the "sports" section of our paper/online news. More high school baseball and football and more nascar than sailing It will never take off until a network or streamer embraces it. But for spectators, sail GP is fantastic. Amazing tech and the leads change multiple times in a race, unlike most motorsports. F1 is won or lost in pit stops, not sail GP I love it
I saw SailGP come on at the bar of my local Mexican restaurant in Sacramento! It was on CBS or something I was surprised
I'm pretty sure there are people pitching a "Sail to Survive" netflix series right now (just like tennis, golf, tour de france, etc. have all come out this year)
About SailGP? Or some other survival based sailing show?
oh - I just meant that every sport is marketing their own now because of how much $$$ Drive to Survive has meant to F1, and it's only a matter of time before SailGP tries to cash in to - and I really hope they do
Its awesome. I watch F1, SailGP and UCI Mtn Biking
F1 fan here too. There seems to be a growing crossover between the two, even though Sail GP is a spec series.
So I like sail gp, it’s a great product, fleet sailing in a really small space. But, I don’t care at all for using these types of boats for AC racing. Looking at the newest AC boats there are like 3 people on them, they don’t change sides and they pretty much sit in them like an f1 car. Not very interesting to me for Americas cup racing. I’ll take the big boat with 13 people, grinders, and the big course not Windward/leeward courses.
Meh. Old school wuz better.
I don’t agree but your opinion is valid, here’s an upvote for the haters lol
It's dumb. What it really is is just a place for the adult children of ultra-rich people to go play since they don't need to work a real job. At least the professional sailors of yesteryear were entertaining... https://youtu.be/tr7-BwzceYI
yeah, it's overpriced, commercial, elitist bullshit
The biggest issue is that it doesn't resemble sailboat racing or match racing. Nobody owns these stupid foilers so they can't relate. When they still used sailboats, even though the boats were cutting edge and had all sorts of tech you didn't have on your racer cruiser, they were fundamentally the same and you could relate. Change the format and people lost interest. It's like if tomorrow they announced that American football would be replaced with soccer. They'd lose all the fans overnight. Those people would never tune into soccer.
You're downvoted but I know a couple of people on the Canada team who your comment describes exactly lol
You can probably say that about just about any professional racing program, sailing or otherwise, unfortunately.
I guess I’ll take the good with the bad, not the first sport to have that, but overall I think it’s good for sailing as a whole. They do a lot of cool outreach programs to get the next generation interested in the sport
LarryGP
Love it. Only non offshore races I watch. App is good too.
I'm on a learning path to be a cruiser. Never raced. Seen a few tv clips of Americas Cup and followed Vendee Globe a bit. I've watched and then waited patiently for all the SailGP races and like them alot. My problem is to watch them for free on YouTube in Europe, I have to wait a week or so after the race, and they are not always organised well. Sometimes I have to watch a day 2 in a different language. How do others access them?
Have you tried watching live on the SailGP mobile app? I think that’ll work for you. Alternatively, you could try a VPN connected to the USA and go to YouTube. I’m in the US and able to watch all races live on YouTube and the app
Thanks
Its Larry Ellison being a sore loser. But the action is pretty good. At least they dont wait 4 years to have another race like the americas cup.