Andrew: New York Was Bittersweet But We Raised The Bar

Strategist Andrew Campbell writes to U.S. SailGP Team fans following the New York Sail Grand Prix

Published 06/4/2026

Where do you start after New York? I feel like the swings were higher and lower this weekend. It was definitely bittersweet, because we went into it with high expectations about how the shore side of it was going to go, how the fan support was going to look, how the activations from all the sponsors were going to go. But elite sport often has other ideas!

Showing our best side

It felt like every sponsor was out, which is just a really great feeling for all of us, because we know that we're well supported. The number of people that were at the Fan Zone at Pier 17, and that were there all over the place at the Adrenaline Lounge was brilliant. I got lots of messages from family and friends who were on boats on the water. That kind of stuff is just incredible to see, and is really what you hope to see in a home event.

When we bore down into sailing team mode, Saturday was such a hard day because it was so windy, our boat wasn't going to launch, and there was confusion about how the format of the weekend was going to look. Our sailing team really stuck together in that kind of uncertainty, and that was a really powerful reminder of how we're doing as a squad.

We have come a long way, and we showed in the stress of the racing part of that day that we've got a long way to go, and there are some really good lessons to be learned.

On Sunday, I think we showed the best side of our sailing operation. The races we finished were just top of the fleet, and something that we feel like we can do, and expect to do. We know it can be really hard in the middle of the pack, and we also know that when we get our noses out clean, we need to be able to finish those races – so to go and execute on that was really, really rewarding.

The traffic of that last start was just a tough end to an outstanding weekend. Even there, we had some really incredible moments from our Shore Team in how they responded to the scenario, the SailGP Tech Team in how they got in there quickly and made sure that all of us were safe and that the boats were able to be pulled apart and quickly recovered. The professionalism that the guys on both sides of the operation - the other teams, our squad, the Tech Team - all showed was really high, and that's what we rely on to go out and race every day and race hard.

A hard puzzle to solve

There's a lot to reflect on and a lot to still unpack from the collision.

Figuring out how we're going to completely understand how we approach situations like that in the future is the most-important thing. We're going to get some clarification from the umpires and really show our position – we did pretty much all we could to keep clear of Brazil. It was just a really unfortunate confluence of events that ended our weekend.

These boats get really close to each other a lot on this racetrack. When all the boats are going similar speeds and similar angles, it kind of clears itself out for the most part. Going down to Mark One in that first reach – those are high-speed moments. You saw how bad it can go with the guys in Auckland when a boat gets counter to the angles, 90 degrees to the angle of the fleet, and is slow. That's when really dangerous moments happen.

It's the same in NASCAR or F1: when the cars are going the same speed and doing pretty much the same corners, the cars can get really close, and it looks really dangerous and it is really dangerous, but for the most part everybody knows how each other is going to react. It's only when someone's in a position you don't expect that things get really difficult to parse through.

They're not easy patterns to solve, because boats are going sideways, and when they're not going sideways at the same rate, when they're up and foiling, it becomes really hard to turn and clear out of the way of boats that are touching down or in the water and going pretty difficult angles to avoid. It's not an easy puzzle to solve, but I think it is one that we can step back from.

Setting the standard

It was fantastic to come through the start line in Races 1 and 2 where you’re just that much faster than the rest of the fleet, the Statue of Liberty behind you – that's a dream come true type of scenario where the stars kind of aligned, and we sailed well, and we did what we expected to do.

We would almost prefer to ignore the backdrop and just have it be like the simulator, where it's just a blank screen in the background and you have no idea where you are – you're just going out and executing what is within your blinders.

But when you close your eyes and open them again and realize that you're in the biggest city in the Western Hemisphere, having an absolute blast with all your buddies, racing as hard as you can and winning races, that's as good as it gets.

We are never satisfied with how the progress is happening – we always want more. We all recognize it was a great weekend from that standpoint, because we had some really nice results that reflect the improvements in what we're doing, but we also had some really difficult moments within the team that demonstrate we need to do a lot better on the process side and that there's still room for improvement.

Everybody was feeling all the feelings throughout the weekend, because there really were great moments, there really were painful moments, there were difficult moments of communication, and there were nuggets of absolute gold that we can take away and say, "This is how this team should operate."

To use ourselves as the example of how we should operate is a really, really great reflection. Oftentimes we've used other teams as a benchmark for how we want to look or how we want to operate, and to be one of the standard-bearing teams for the weekend at times is something that we can come back and say, "Okay, we're on the right track, and we need to keep pushing," because those other teams are doing exactly the same thing – they're going away, looking at themselves, looking at us, and saying, "How can we be better? How can we take on the learning from the good teams over the weekend and move forward?"

So we need to be better again and we can’t wait to go again in Halifax later this month.

Speak soon,

Andrew

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