SailGP teams are ready to shake off rust this weekend in New York, as the global championship returns to action following a short hiatus caused by a defect with the wingsail that forced the cancellation of the Rio event.

The defect was identified after the Australian boat’s wing fell off in San Francisco, in March. Repair and upgrade works were carried out to fix the problem on the F50 Fleet in time for New York's highly anticipated competition.

The first female SailGP driver, twice Olympic champion Martine Gral from Brazil, said: "We learned a lot in the past two months."

We have made a lot changes to our sailing. There are almost too many, and we know that you can only deal with a few at a given time. We are focusing on what we can do here."

Brazil, which was recently added to the tournament, hopes to improve its ranking from 10th when the action begins on Saturday at 1.30 p.m. Due to bad weather, the event started two and a quarter hours earlier than scheduled.

Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds and the A-List, the new co-owners of the Australian team, are looking to impress. They have made headlines in recent weeks for their achievements off the water.

Each of the boats is equipped with 125 sensors that continuously feed data.

Warren Jones, Chief technology officer at SailGP, said: "We provide data to everyone." "Top teams hate this, but newer teams love them."

Jones built a robust analytics operation "from a blank piece of paper" using Oracle's capabilities, which were culled from the billionaire cofounder Larry Ellison.

It is hoped that the data points shared across the competition will help to transform the next generation - both newcomers and diehards.

Jones said, "You need to know the basic things - how fast the people are moving because it puts them in danger."

We can also rate the number of tacks and the comparison between the current tack and the previous tack. (Reporting from Amy Tennery, New York; editing by Pritha Sakar)

(source: Reuters)