52 SUPER SERIES Saint-Tropez Sailing Week
Fourth overall last season, 2024 and fourth also on 2022’s final standings, fifth in 2023 Takashi Okura’s USA flagged Sled team start 2025 looking to find the small percentage gains here and there which they hope would contribute to finishing on the overall podium in Sardinia, Italy at the end of the season
With the return to the afterguard of Luna Rossa’s Italian favourite Francesco Bruni, alongside six times America’s Cup winner Murray Jones and Italian navigator Andrea Visintini, the line up which won both the Rolex TP52 World Championship and the 2021 circuit title is reformed around accomplished owner-driver Mr Okura.
The gains they are searching for may be small and in effect the same as those mostly sought universally through the fleet, but project manager and mainsheet trimmer Don Cowie points to their as much to their quest to cut out the ‘big numbers’ – the bad races – as what they see their prime target.
“We are a consistent team but not quite consistent enough yet. We need to do a better job there.” Kiwi Cowie asserts, “We started off last season well with a 4,4,2 and then we fell off the face of the earth at the end of the season. So we need to be consistent. You need to get rid of the bad races. You don’t have to win every race but you just cannot afford to have bad races, big scores. We need to get off the start line well every race.”
And the bigger the fleet size the harder it is, “You really notice the difference when there are 13 boats rather than 10. You need to get out of the blocks well. Francesco Bruni is good at that with Mr Okura and then getting Murray on to the first wind shift and deciding which way, left or right. We work hard on that and were maybe not so good at the end of the season.”
And Cowie and the Sled squad are on the same page in terms of pacing themselves through the long season, ensuring the 52 SUPER SERIES, is the main focus for the squad.
“One of the other things we are quite wary of us is you have to not do too much sailing, some guys are sailing 52s, RC44s, Swan 50s and we think towards the end of the season quite a few guys are burnt out. So it is important to manage our team’s sailing. They have to make sure Sled is top priority. We will not accept anyone arriving on the day of the practice race, you have to be with us for the practice sessions, the whole nine yards. We have a bunch of guys who have said ‘Sled is our priority’……It is a tricky one because this is how guys make their living but on the other hand Mr Okura is spending a lot of money to do well.”
Sled are one of several teams to have updated their foil package under the water, Cowie explains, “There has been quite a trend over the last couple or three years and we led the charge with a different fin in 2022 as did Quantum Racing. The Platoon and Provezza Judel Vrolijk fins were different so now there is an initiative to look at the appendage packages and so we have done a pretty good study there, we are happy with what have, falling more in line with what the rest of the fleet have in terms of size and width. Everybody is a little different. We have done quite a bit of work with Adolfo (Carrau at Botin) and hopefully that works out well for us.”
The other change for Sled is getting their sails made in Japan, “We are getting our sails made at North Sails Japan which is cool for us as North Sails New Zealand has closed down and so that is good for us. We used to build all our sails there in NZ. But Nobu is our analyst, he has been with us since Day 1 and is the President of North Sails Japan, so we are a bit different to everyone else.”
Bruni and the band are back together
And after missing two years away with the Italian America’s Cup programme Bruni is delighted to be back with a circuit he loves in a class he loves,
“It’s nice to be back in the 52 SUPER SERIES and especially to be back with the Sled team looking ahead to some great racing. I know this is going to be a great season with a crew that I know very well and that I really get along well with. I’m also very curious to see how we will go and so very happy to see the class still very active. It is great to always go to race in beautiful locations, there are excellent choice for this year too, so it will certainly be a great season. It is a nice, very compact, very competitive season, and more than ever there are no easy teams to beat so it will be a real battle from Day 1 until the last races of the last day in Porto Cervo in September.”
Sled were reported to be one of the teams considering building a new boat, Cowie explains,
“ We were quite a way down the path and we kind of thought we could something special. There is a good possibility we might see a couple of new boats in 2026 but the thing we all want to find about it as soon as possible is where we are going to sail and what sort of boat you would build. The sooner we can get them locked in the better. And Mr Okura really wants to go to nice places to sail.
Personally I’d love to go back to Cagliari, in Marseille we had good regattas, Cascais is normally good. We really want venues which are good sea breeze venues for example or we know we will get stronger breezes.”
Sled made the strategic decision to maximise their training on the Gulf of Saint Tropez prior to next week’s start of the season at the 52 SUPER SERIES Saint Tropez Sailing Week rather than join the training group in Valencia earlier this month. And so, hoping to carry their impetus through into the regatta, they have been one of the first teams on the water, getting ready to put their ideas into actions!
