RNZYS members enjoy a day ashore at the golf course

With aggression always dialed up high, Robertson does not shy away from tangling with the big guns. – Ricardo Pinto Photo

Programme graduates formed the Waka Sailing team. They sold up everything to go on the road in Europe seeking professional careers on the match race circuit.

“We slept on a lot of couches and did a lot of begging to get accepted into regattas. Jimmy Spithill advised us to knock on every door, because we could sometimes pick up last-minute slots in events when the big dogs pulled out.”

Robertson led crews to two match race world titles (2016 and 2019), but sailing was evolving in new directions. The match race circuit, which had been so strong through the Coutts, Dickson, Barker era, lost momentum. New, faster, more TV-attractive models were emerging around multihulls and eventually foiling boats.

Determined to continue his sailing career, Robertson began his multinational pilgrimage, wearing flags of many colours. His CV includes China, Russia, Oman, Spain and next up Canada in events as diverse as the Extreme Sailing Series, GC32s, M32s, AC45s in the America’s Cup World Series and currently the F50 foiling catamarans of SailGP.

Despite communication challenges and rookie crews, Robertson never gave an inch against the more seasoned and fancied teams. “There are two sides to that,” he says. “That is my personality. I definitely do not mind pushing a point. It comes from my match racing background, where you have to be aggressive.

“The other side is that with an inexperienced team, you have to push harder to be competitive against the top guys. In SailGP, it is so important to get around the first reaching mark in a top-three position, so we put a lot of emphasis on starting and getting off the line in good shape. We felt it was worth risking a penalty to put ourselves in that position.”

A poll of the SailGP skippers midway through Season Two ranked Robertson the most aggressive and there were inevitable scrapes and bangs as a consequence. He does not shy away from that, although he points out there more serious incidents later in the season between other teams.

When highly competitive athletes are racing at 40 knots in close quarters, every role on the boat is crucial and must be performed in a precisely choreographed sequence. None of the teams has escaped calamity of one sort or another and the loftiest reputations have suffered their embarrassments – highlighting the added pressure on any team with L-plates on the transom.

“Early on, Phil was nicknamed Crash Bandicoot,” says Brad Marsh, who was in the RNZYS Youth Programme with Robertson and now heads up the technical team responsible for fixing and maintaining the fleet of SailGP F50s. “But that label never stuck.

“The technical team guys understand where Phil is at and very often the mistakes are not his fault. Everybody looks at the skipper, but Phil is racing and coaching simultaneously, rather than having the world’s best sailors alongside him. He has always had to fight with one hand behind his back with inexperienced and under-resourced teams,” adds Marsh.

Despite these challenges, in the circuit’s first season, Robertson led the start-up China Team to a remarkable 3rd overall. And in the recentlyconcluded second season, he brought a young Spanish team into the

final event in San Francisco in 4th place overall, behind the powerhouse trio of Australia (Tom Slingsby), USA (Jimmy Spithill) and Japan (Nathan Outteridge), 1pt ahead of America’s Cup champion Peter Burling’s New Zealand crew and 2pts ahead of Ben Ainslie’s British crew

However, just as hostilities were about to commence, Robertson and the Spanish team parted company, leaving Barcelona native Jordi Xammar at the helm. The US regatta was always going to be Robertson’s last event with the team, having secured a new position leading another start-up team, this time from Canada.

Announcing the unscheduled leadership change, the Spanish CEO, Maria del Mar de Ros said: “The thing is that Phil, he feels he is superior in some sort of way, and that they (the crew) are kids.”

Although Robertson rejects the characterisation – “anybody who knows me would know that is as far from the truth as it can be” – the rift did reveal totally different visions of the team’s position.

From Robertson’s battler perspective, they were well placed. “We were knocking on the door of a top-three championship result, with some notable sailors and teams behind us on the leaderboard,” he says.

All of his never-say-die instincts were to fight tooth and nail for the highest possible slot in the championship order. “Unfortunately,” he says, “the team’s decision was not to focus on this season any longer.

“Instead, with the final event still to play for, they wanted to concentrate on next season. That absolutely baffled me. I don’t know how any competitive team could think like that, but that was the situation.”

Accordingly, the team decided they would devote the bulk of an eight-day training block in San Francisco to focus on the next season with their new helmsman, with only a day and a half allocated for training with Robertson.

“I arrived in San Francisco after the team had already been training for five days. After my first day, I sat down with the guys and said I felt rusty and needed more time. San Francisco is not a place to show up unprepared.”

Unless he could have more training sessions over the next two days, Robertson felt his position as skipper would be compromised and it would be best to change the leadership there and then.

“After a lot of hard work to get this team onto a competitive footing, to have it end on that note is not what you would want,” he says. (As it happened, with Robertson watching from the sidelines, the Spanish team finished last in San Francisco, sinking their overall season championship standing to second last.)

However, the next chapter with Canada awaits and Robertson is raring to go. “The team owner, Fred Pye and his wife Chantal are 100% in terms of commitment. Their passion is to bring this high level of sailing back into Canada. They realise there has been a void at the top end and feel they can inspire the next generation to put Canada in a great sailing place in 10 years’ time.”

Pye is a lifelong sailor himself and is described by the Toronto Globe and Mail as an investment industry entrepreneur. His company, 3iQ Corporation, was the world’s first public investment fund devoted to Bitcoin.

Do their ambitions extend to the America’s Cup, where Canada has mounted several challenges in the past? “They absolutely want to bring Canada back to the highest level of the sport,” says Robertson. “That is the goal, but everybody realises it will take time. You have to start somewhere and this is the start.”

Robertson’s own America’s Cup ambitions, set alight by watching his Kiwi heroes triumph on home waters 22 years ago, have never dimmed. He senses a great opportunity with this Canadian project and, as ever, is ready to commit heart and soul to its success.

“Part of your heart is always where you grew up, but I am an interesting case,” he says. “I grew up in New Zealand with a Kiwi father and a British mother. I have a Swedish wife and now I represent Canada. I am international. I am happy where I am. I am content.”

Robertson is looking forward to his next mission with Canada.

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