SUMMER 2019SW085collectively increase in performance as the season progresses.
“The coolest part is when the numbers and your gut align,” Morris
says. “It really helps you trust your instincts.”
After its abbreviated practice, the team completes a 90-minute
pack-up: boat out, wing down, etc. With the sun already setting
over their Lady Liberty wing sail the team postpones its debrief and
heads to a local burger joint to refuel instead. They have the next
day o to recuperate and many of them order double burgers and
extra fries in a bid to hit their daily calorie counts. Conversations
meander between sailing stories and past romantic conquests
while flight controller Taylor Canfield shares the diculty of keeping
the boat on its foils through maneuvers.
“It’s tricky,” he explains. “Some days, we’ll come in from sailing
completely comfortable with the systems we have on board and
then they’ll change the software completely, so it’s a big challenge
for us to keep up with the constant changes. But we’re always
trying to push harder and set the bar high for ourselves.”
As a World Match Race Tour champion, the 29-year-old Canfield,
of the U.S. Virgin Islands, is plenty experienced on bigger high-
performance cats, but he was thrust into the flight-controller role
with minimal experience on foiling boats.
“We still have a lot to
learn in the way we start
the boat and our general
course management,” he
says. “It’s all dierent—
the angles, the modes we
hit, all while sailing around
the course at no less than
25 knots of boatspeed.”
The following morning,
the team wakes at 07:30
for a morning gym ses-
sion. Head athletic trainer
Craig McFarlane has
everything planned out
as they arrive at a local
gym in Emeryville. He
served a similar role with
Oracle Team USA for the past two
America’s Cup cycles and was at
the forefront of developing top sail-
ors into world-class sailor athletes.
“We have a great culture on
this team,” he says. “Culture can
win championships more than tal-
ent alone. There’s a lot of skilled
sailors out there, but when you’re
building a team, you have to
consider more than that.
“A lot of it comes down to how they interact as a unit, and
I think we’ve developed something special with this group.”
SailGP sailors are in transit more often than they are
together, so most of the team’s strength-building sessions
are completed remotely and logged for McFarlane’s review.
With the San Francisco event just days away, today’s workout
is pure maintenance.
“The trickiest part is not having all the guys all of the
time,” he says. “It’s not the same as a Cup campaign where
everyone is at the gym together every morning. It’s a
challenge for us, but we have ways of working around that.”
With the sailors being pushed physically and mentally on the
water, McFarlane administers a typical strength and cardio-
focused workout structure, but includes hand-eye coordination
and cognition exercises as well. That means getting the sailors
to maximum heart rate and immediately making them solve a
puzzle or play a game to build their mental skills.
“We also do a lot of exercises with dierent colored balls, which
we can use to trigger dierent kinds of mental reactions while the
sailors are under stress,” he says.
After a quick breakfast, team members have some time to
themselves. Gibbs plans to take a few laps of San Francisco Bay
with his kite-foil rig, while others contemplate a bike ride or a
climbing session back at the gym.
Kirby is stressing out about the opening pitch he has to throw at
Oracle Park for the San Francisco Giants game in a few days.
“As long as I make it over the plate, I’ll be happy,” he says with a
smile. “One of these days, we’ll have to get the boys to a hockey
game instead. Now that’s a real sport.”Editor’s note: In the days following the author’s visit with the team,
U.S. SailGP posted a better result in the San Francisco stop of
the series, advancing to fourth overall. Team Australia defeated
Team Japan in the event’s match-race final. The series continues
in New York in June before heading overseas to Marseilles, France
and concluding in Cowes, England, in August.Olympic campaigners Hans
Henken (opposite-bottom) and
Mac Agnese (above) are grinders
for U.S. SailGP. The team finished
fourth in San Francisco in April,
an improvement over their last-
place finish in Sydney, Australia,
three months earlier.