Australia master the chaos as wind vanishes on Sassnitz

SASSNITZ, Germany — Fluky as the concluding day of the Germany Sail Grand Prix might have been, through all the gusts, lulls, flat calms and rain squalls, the Australians fought through to claim their fifth event in nine this season.

Fast starts in SailGP are as crucial as grabbing pole position in motorsport. Tom Slingsby seized the initiative out of the line against Australia's three rivals — Canada, New Zealand and the laggardly Spanish, who were slow to get rolling. Australia extended its advantage around the two-lap race track and foiled at good speed across the finish line to take the winner's gun and $400,000 prize money.

Meanwhile, the breeze evaporated behind the Australians, leaving the remaining three F50s almost stranded on the race course. They were caught in a side-by-side, slo-mo drift to the finish, barely moving through the water. By the time they crossed the finish line — Canada, Spain and New Zealand in that order — Slingsby and his grinning Flying Roos had stepped off the boat, been ferried ashore, scaled the steps of the podium and cracked open the champagne.

A podium before the race was even over

Slingsby told The Athletic: "It was a bit of a weird feeling. We were on the podium before the other teams had even finished, which I don't think has ever been done before. Sometimes the wind just shuts down, and we managed to sneak through the finish line while the other teams were still finishing."

"We did have a little giggle about that," Aussie strategist Tash Bryant told The Athletic. "We were standing on the shore, trying to figure out who'd finished second, third and fourth. It's a pretty cool feeling."

It was a wild and wacky weekend in Sassnitz, but this quirky, backwater venue in northern Germany has shaken off the unwanted nickname from a year ago. No more Crashnitz or Smashnitz, because 13 boats started the weekend and all 13 finished with no major incident.

Canada edges a slo-mo nailbiter for second

After Australia's win in the four-boat final, the fight to be the best of the rest was bizarre. "It was a bit of a weird way to end a final, with an 18-meter wing package (designed for strong winds) in 8 kph (5 mph) of breeze with three boats racked up like that," Canada's driver, Giles Scott, told The Athletic. "But we got on the right side of it, sneaked in around the mark, and took the option to try to sail high to the finish because there was a tiny little puff rolling off the wall (near the stadiums).

"The Spanish decided to soak low (steer away from the direction of the wind) early, got a bit stalled and opened the door for us," Scott continued. "That moment defined the result, but before that, we were sailing the boat really well. Today, we've got a lot to be proud of. Yesterday, we came ashore feeling not quite on top of it, whereas today, right from the outset of the warmup, we were locked in and feeling good. It's nice that it translated into a good result."

After a lackluster start to the season, the Canadians are just 6 points off fourth place, the cutoff for making the grand final in Abu Dhabi this November, where the winner of the last race will take home $2 million.

Rain and electronics failures plague rivals

Not only was the rain playing havoc with visibility on the race course, but it seemed to be affecting the electronics on board some of the F50s. Peter Burling, having driven New Zealand to its first final of the season, found some of the electronics had deserted him for the all-important start of the final race.

"We had a few system problems on board in that last race, which made our life pretty hard," he told The Athletic. "We had a little shutdown on the race screens, and sailing with little visibility (because of the rain) made life a little hard. But the coaches (from the shore) did a good job of feeding the information that we needed, and that kept us in the hunt."

It was a similar story of flying by the seat of their pants on the Spanish boat, as skipper Diego Botin told The Athletic. "In the Grand Final, there was massive rain, and it was very hard to see outside," he said. "Our starting strategy got crazy. We had no wind data, just the boundaries and our timings for the start, and we basically got lost and were sailing blind."

Germany delights home crowd as race turns 'inside out'

In its first group race of the day, Australia took an early lead after a good start. But when the wind died, all bets were off. The race turned into a drift-off, and Australia, along with Great Britain, was left stranded as other boats sailed around them, notably the German team. Dylan Fletcher was gutted to have missed an opportunity to get Britain into the final.

"Right now, it's pretty tough to take," he told The Athletic. "I felt like we sailed quite well, but in that race, things turned a little inside out. The Germans behind us looked like they were going to sail into no wind, and the Aussies tacked out to the right for more pressure and got it completely wrong. It turned out you needed to sail into what looked like an absolute mirror. That kind of summed up the day for us; we kept getting on the wrong side of it."

Where Fletcher had looked into the mirror and didn't like what he saw, Germany's strategist Anna Barth saw opportunity. "I actually saw something on the left," she told The Athletic. "I saw the Brits and Australia tacking out, and while the closest pressure was on the right side, there was something coming from where the spectator boats were on the left. It had to be a quick decision, but I called that pressure. Erik (Kosegarten-Heil, Germany's driver) saw it as well; we went there, and it turned our way."

It turned their way big-time, as Germany popped up on the foils, leaving its rivals stranded in its wake and wowing the home crowd by finishing almost half a mile ahead. Russell Coutts, CEO of SailGP as well as an Olympic gold medalist and five-time America's Cup winner, was delighted to see the Germans win a race Saturday and do it again Sunday.

"When the breeze dropped in the rain, it looked like a gust from a distance, but it came right past the windward mark, so I knew it was rain and not a gust," he told The Athletic. "You could see the flags (on the spectator boats) starting to move. Maybe that's why the Germans carried on while Britain and Australia tacked away in that drift-off. The Germans might have gotten a bit lucky, but you could see the flags on the outside. That was a great moment for them."

There won't be much rest for the teams, as the SailGP bandwagon moves swiftly on to Valencia, Spain, for the next event on Sept. 5 and 6.