Editor’s note: This story is part of The Athletic’s coverage of SailGP, an international sailing competition that has been likened to Formula 1 on water. Follow SailGP here.

SailGP Season 6 kicked off with a bang in Perth, Australia, thanks to the hard breeze gusting in from the Indian Ocean.

Known to locals as the Fremantle Doctor, 20 knots of wind and big waves made for some hard yards around the short-course race track. Some teams were properly racing, others were hanging on for dear life, struggling to keep the F50 catamaran on a short leash.

Britain started its title defence with victory in conditions driver Dylan Fletcher told reporters were “absolutely incredible,” while Australia had to settle for second on home waters. For the U.S., there was plenty of promise after a disappointing bottom-of-the-table finish last season.

Andrew Rice was in Perth to analyze the opening Grand Prix of the 13-event season.

Great Britain rules the Australian waves

Australia might have wiped the floor with England in cricket’s Ashes, but in SailGP Britain is starting to make a habit of winning on Aussie waters.

Last year, Dylan Fletcher drove the British boat to victory on Sydney Harbour and now he’s done it in Perth, relegating Tom Slingsby’s Flying Roos to the runner-up spot.

On Saturday, Fletcher’s crew looked a bit out of sorts, and the on-board comms not quite clicking —their best finish in the day’s four fleet races was third. In the windier stuff of Sunday, though, the Brits really kicked up a gear, winning the first two fleet races and grabbing fourth in the next despite failing to execute good starts.

Fletcher told The Athletic: “It felt that yesterday [Saturday] we got really caught up in ourselves and didn’t really quite execute at the start or at the bottom gate, but today [Sunday] it just felt like we could stretch our legs and use our speed.”

With double Olympic gold medalist Hannah Mills calling the shots in her strategy role, the British showed a good knack of avoiding the traffic jams at the pinchpoints on the race course and using clear space to exert a solid boat speed advantage.

France fast out of the blocks

If the British were the masters of finding space on the race course, the skill of the French was finding space in the start box.

Time and again on Saturday, driver Quentin Delapierre made a late charge from the back of the box and hoped that a gap would open up in the slow-moving pack ahead of him. Somehow, the window of opportunity always opened up for the French and they charged to an early lead.

If anything, they’ll be unhappy to give up the lead on two occasions right before the finish, to Sweden on Saturday and Britain on Sunday. But third place overall is an encouraging start to the season for the French, who look really quick in a straight line.

France, helmed by Quentin Delapierre, leads Canada’s Northstar team on day two in Perth. (Ricardo Pinto for SailGP)

Last-minute stand-in works wonders for Australia

Tom Slingsby doesn’t like losing to anyone on home waters, particularly not the British, but the Australian skipper acknowledged that second was a solid result under trying circumstances for the team after wing trimmer Iain Jensen’s severe knee injury had led to the late call-up for veteran Glenn Ashby.

Ashby, an Olympic medallist and winning skipper in the America’s Cup, said he was minding his own business “feeding the cows” at his farm in Victoria, way out east in Australia, when he got the call-up to fly across to Perth and help save the day for the Flying Roos.

“A mixed reaction to it, it really hurts to lose on home waters, but all things considered, it’s a huge result for us to finish second,” Slingsby told The Athletic. 

“With Goobs [Jensen] knocked out of racing and Glenn Ashby filling in at the last minute, I said to my wife that if we get a top six this weekend, that’s a win.”

Biggest improvers? USA

Finishing fourth on their first outing was an impressive debut for Artemis SailGP, the new team representing Sweden. However, with the caliber of sailors that Artemis has hired, starting with Australian skipper Nathan Outteridge, perhaps not so surprising.

So, the biggest improvers this weekend have to be the U.S., headed by Taylor Canfield, after finishing fifth overall.

The U.S. team hits a wave on the opening day in Perth. (Samo Vidic for SailGP)

After a horrible Season 5 with multiple moments of disaster, in the strong wind and waves of Perth, Canfield and crew looked like a team transformed.

“We wanted to up our game in the strong conditions and we felt we really achieved that this weekend,” Canfield told The Athletic. “When we do the maneuvers well, we’re in the mix, when we do our starts well, we’re in the mix. Everyone is tired of hearing about ‘progress’ from us, but we made a lot of progress and showed it this weekend.

“I feel we have the ability to be up at the front and we’ll see how it goes this season. The fleet is compressing so quickly, everyone has the skills. This league has come such a long way in performance, every team has a shot at winning.”

Broken boats and opportunities missed

Spain suffered a broken boat during training, a gear failure that put them out of the weekend through no fault of their own.

In the case of New Zealand, they took themselves out of the competition very early in lap one of the first race of the season. Skipper Pete Burling refused to accept that he was the boat at fault in a tight situation with the Swiss team, which resulted in the back few feet of the Kiwi boat being smashed clean off the hull, the rudder sinking to the bottom of the bay and later to be retrieved.

However, the umpires ruled the New Zealanders to be the boat at fault and gave Burling seven penalty points, which will haunt him for the rest of the season.

Perth is better than Abu Dhabi

Perth delivered the most thrilling start to Season 6. The high wind and waves demanded courage and precision from the sailors, and had the sold-out ticketed stadiums enthralled with the heart-in-mouth drama.

It was a strong contrast to the lighter winds of Abu Dhabi, which concluded Season 5 at the end of November, and will host the finale this coming November.

Organizers must be wondering if, in future years, Perth should be the place to host the climax of the season, not the start.