**Ben Glover is in San Francisco courtesy of Sail GP, covering the final race of the 2021/2022 championship and Australia’s quest for $1.4 million
This is the moment one of the world’s best sailors reacted just in time to avoid a catastrophe that would have endangered lives and ended the quest of two high-class teams vying for a world championship and the $1.4 million prize that comes with it.
In a frightening near-miss on the bay of San Francisco, Australia’s Olympic gold medallist Tom Slingsby misheard his flight controller and grinder Kinley Fowler who was watching the USA boat, and made a decision that very nearly ended with two wrecked race boats and more than likely several sailors in hospital with serious injuries. Or worse.
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“It would have been an absolute disaster,” Fowler told Wide World of Sports of the incident that happened while both crews were training in the lead-up to this weekend’s season-ending races that will determine which Sail GP crew takes home the $1.4 million prize.
“They would have been going at around 40 knots (75 km/h) and we would have been going just under 40 knots. And we would have hit them, like, full T-bone.
“They had guys in a vulnerable position because they had just jibed. It would have been really really bad. Really scary. And even scary for us because we would have stopped (clicks fingers) like that. So I think for everyone it was a bit of a relief that we saw them in time to turn up and we only missed them by a couple of feet.”
Fowler, like all of these sailors racing for what’s becoming the most prestigious prize in the sport, is highly experienced and has seen plenty of dangerous incidents.
On Friday (AEDT) the Australian boat capsized during a training session, and there are often incidents where competing boats get their angles wrong going upwind and crash.
However, rarely do two race boats go so close to colliding at such high speeds.
Fowler explains that during racing every boat has the same objective and is heading towards the same markers on the course, so it’s easier to predict when a rival boat will jibe or tack and in which direction.
However, when they are out training in the days leading up to a race weekend, there are no physical markers on the course and the objectives aren’t as clear, making trying to predict what another boat is going to do far more difficult.
It’s for this reason that the job of Fowler on the Australian boat is so crucial. Of the six crew members on board, Fowler is the only one facing backwards. It is his role to communicate what the boats behind are doing to help Slingsby, Australia’s driver, make snap decisions that will ultimately determine whether Australia wins a race or falls back in the 10-boat field.
More often than not Slingsby makes the right calls. He has previously led Australia to a Sail GP series victory and has them leading the current series, which will be decided in Monday’s (AEDT) three-boat grand final, which will more than likely include the USA boat as well.
Yet, this near miss with one of Australia’s fiercest rivals shows what can go wrong if Slingsby misinterprets the calls being made by his teammates.
In this case Slingsby thought Fowler had called “they turn up” when he had actually called “they set up”. Only one of the three words is different, but in this case the two calls are almost polar opposites in terms of what they meant for the Australian boat.
The call Slingsby thought he heard effectively means that the Americans have turned upwind and are well and truly out of the way so they’re no longer a consideration. But what Fowler actually called meant that the Americans were jibing and were still very much in the picture if Slingsby chose the wrong move. And that’s how this incident played out.
“It was a bit of a frenzy, I crossed into the wing and when I got to the wing I just saw our boat lining up their boat perfectly and if we didn’t change our course drastically we were going to be cutting their boat in half,” Fowler said.
Clearly, in Sail GP the stakes are high and more than just a huge cash prize is on the line. Such is the velocity that these boats travel, it’s a rarely acknowledged reality that life and limb are also at risk.
Asked what would have happened if Australia had barrelled straight into USA, Fowler guesses a stay in an intensive care unit would have been the best some of the American crew could have hoped for.
“We have these safety measures in place but we haven’t really had a full-on high-speed crash yet. Like we’ve had crashes where boats have sort of come on top of each other sailing upwind but we’ve never had something like that, so I think it would have been pretty bad,” Fowler said.
“In 2019 we had a big incident where the boat was going really fast and went underwater very quickly and Ky Hurst, one of our grinders from that season, broke his nose in that incident.
“That was nothing compared to what this would have been. For sure guys on their boat would have been in big trouble and a few of our guys would have been in trouble too.”
Of the American crew onboard as the Australian boat came careering towards them, flight controller Rome Kirby was in arguably the most dire position.
Had the worst case scenario of a direct hit happened – a T-bone crash to paint the picture – Kirby may not have survived. Yet such is the life of a Sail GP crew member that he is able to talk about it in an understated, almost blasé way.
“It was close,” he told Wide World of Sports.
“I think Tommy (Slingsby) had a bit of a comms issue and one of the guys said ‘setting up’ and he thought we were ‘turning up’ so it definitely got pretty close there for a hot second.
“I was definitely nervous. For a hot second there the bow was coming straight at my head so I definitely went ‘Woah, here we go, this is close!’ But it’s part of the game, you’re racing these guys really close and tight and you’re pushing the edge on it.
“You try to keep the worst case scenario out of your head. It definitely can be catastrophic, right. I had one the other day where we stacked it and I dinged up my shoulder pretty good. But um, yeah, you try not to think about it too much, you try to be as safe as you can, but we’re obviously pushing the limit on it.”
So, what of the $1.4 million if the crash hadn’t been avoided? According to Kirby, it would have been out of the question for both Australia and the USA.
“It would have been a write-off for both boats for sure. We wouldn’t have been racing and I don’t think they would have been either.”
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