The unknown weapon keeping the SailGP team afloat
Sometimes Finn Henry feels like he’s in the forward pack of a rugby scrum, winning possession of the ball while the wingers out back score the tries of glory.
But in Henry’s words, he’s just “more than happy to be on the field”.
Except his field is water, and his team are the country’s best sailors – featuring Olympic gold medallists Peter Burling and Blair Tuke to name two.
Christchurch-based Henry, originally from Kaikōura, is the shore manager for the New Zealand SailGP team.
He’s basically the F1 pit crew or a boat medic of sorts, who takes care of the team’s F50 catamaran Amokura and its assembly process and maintenance. On board, he’s the primary response person if something goes wrong during a race. “If the boats reliable, then I'm doing my job,” he said. “It really goes up a gear when you start going out on the water and [are] dealing with the problems as they come in, that's the part that I enjoy.”
It’s a high pressure position, juggling quick decision making between solving problems himself or reaching for the team’s expert resources on deck. It’s quite different to the rugby and surfing scenes he surrounded himself with growing up.
Following a stint as a scarfie in Dunedin, Henry took a left-field decision to become a deckhand on a sailing boat in England for a “change of direction”. “I spent a few years in that programme, it’s where I got a lot of skills that are applicable to my role now,” he said.
From there he landed a job in the Team New Zealand shore crew for the 2021 America’s Cup, which progressed further than he imagined – into a grinding role on the boat with the sailing team. “I soaked it all up and then coming out of that America's Cup I was faced with getting on with the grinding journey and keeping really fit, or getting a job for this New Zealand
SailGP team in the shore crew, which I saw as a slightly better life balance and just another challenge to take on.”
Henry now travels around the world, and builds houses when he’s home between sailing stints. The role has thrown “quite a few curveballs” his way in the last two years, like the boat being struck by lightning in Singapore last season and a catastrophic entire wing collapse this season. “But in general, I feel like we're doing a good job because the boat has been reliable for races when it's needed to be.”
The recently rebranded SailGP Black Foils enter this weekend’s home event in Christchurch in second place behind Australia.
“Selfishly it is awesome for it to be back in Ōtautahi, and I genuinely think it was one of the best events SailGP’s ever had [last year].”
Billed as the world’s most exciting race on water, SailGP features 10 teams from around the world racing head to head in identical hydrofoiling F50 catamarans that can reach speeds of almost 100kph.
A record breaking crowd of 22,000 spectators are expected over two days of racing taking place on Saturday and Sunday.