Taylor: We learned a lot in Halifax that we’ll take forward with us

U.S. SailGP Team driver Taylor Canfield writes directly to you following the Canada Sail Grand Prix

Published 07/1/2026

Winning our final race in Halifax was a nice way to finish, bouncing back after a disappointing first day.

It's tough to look back on Saturday's performance and realize that we had the potential for a much better day, and it really came down to two key moments where we didn't execute the way we're capable of.

Overall, that's the nature of the game. It's difficult, and we're going to have those moments. Our job is to eliminate as many of them as possible and continue building the level of consistency we need moving forward.

Splitting the fleet

As you might imagine, split fleet racing is quite different to having all 13 F50s on the track at once. There's much more space in the starting box – the starting game is a lot different.

One area where we performed well was our starts. In those conditions, racing becomes more of a tactical game, with decisions driven by the wind and tide as much as the boats around you. The extra space across the racetrack creates more opportunities, so success comes down to reading the conditions and making the right calls as they evolve.

Whereas when you're racing with all 13 boats, the racetrack gets really busy, and it's almost traffic management at times. So it's a different style, but overall, I think at the moment there's probably room for both styles of racing, depending on the venue and the conditions.

Overnight focus

One thing we worked on between Saturday and Sunday was setting a priority list for different conditions, and making sure that when we got out there, we re-evaluated the conditions based on what we're actually seeing versus what the forecast was.

We go into these days feeling like we're very well prepared based on a forecast for a given day, but we are working towards remaining open-minded with additional contingency plans.

Ideally, that conversation would go: ‘These are what the conditions actually are – what are the priorities for the day in these conditions?’ That was one big thing we did nicely going into Sunday, making sure we were ready to adapt to what we had.

Adaptability is the best ability

With the new rule change, having someone on the back tether permanently has basically made four-up sailing equivalent to what used to be three-up sailing, with a little extra help.

Being in the back of the boat, Anna was able to trim the jib from the strategist position a lot of the time, so that unloaded the other three of us on board. But we all pick up a lot more roles when racing short handed.

Everyone is bouncing between important tasks and figuring out how to do our jobs as best we can while also helping others when they're overloaded in certain situations.

The most important thing is we learned from it, we got more experience in a four-up configuration, in differing conditions and we’re better as a team for it. That is all we ever want: to leave an event knowing we’ve made progress.

We’re going to take that into Portsmouth at the end of July where we expect some really windy conditions and more exciting racing.

Speak soon,

Taylor

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