Flying an F50 is a job that demands precision, awareness, and the ability to make constant, subtle adjustments in real time. For Billy Gooderham, flight controller with the Canada SailGP Team, it's a role that builds on years of experience across high-performance classes—from Olympic 49ers to TP52s and C-Class catamarans. His sailing background is varied and technical, making him well suited to the demands of keeping a foiling catamaran in stable flight at speeds up to 50 knots.
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Season 5 of SailGP has brought upgraded T-foils and a deeper, faster fleet – making the flight control role all the more complex. In this deep dive, Gooderham opens up about what it’s like to be an F50 flight controller. He shares what it's like to adapt to a completely new set of physics, why a tiny red stripe on the bow matters more than you'd think, and how the shift from J-foils to T-foils has made flying the boat so much more complex.
Justin Chisholm What were your expectations of the new t-foils and how much did they deliver on those expectations? Or was it very different to what you expected?
Billy Gooderham To be honest, I didn't really have much expectation. I knew it was going to be different, but I didn't really know what that looked like. I don't work in the America’s Cup world or any of that stuff, so this was my first foray into T foils.
But I think the hope was they were going to be faster, and they lived up to that expectation: 102 kilometers an hour is pretty dang fast on one of these boats.
There were a lot of concerns with the oil consumption. It's more loaded foil. So the rake hydraulic ram uses a lot more oil, right? So early days we had concerns with oil consumption and losing authority over the rake cylinder once you just didn't have enough oil, because the rotor pumps couldn't keep up.
And then there was the concern as well, that when you shift the cant angle of the foils your lifting force changes quite significantly. What puts a pretty big wrench in the works is that when you cant the foil out five degrees, all of a sudden your lifting force is dramatically reduced, and then you very quickly have to adjust for that.
So we did some work on writing some rake / cant pairing software, so that basically, as you adjusted the cant the rake would click in and provide you with the same lifting force. But even so, when you make a big foil cant adjustment, you've still got your hands full.
Then it was just about usability. How was the usability going to change with the t-foil. Obviously, the leeway factors of it are drastically different compared to the old j-foil.
With the old ones, if you got it a bit wrong, you could feel the boat start to slide, and you knew you had to tone it down a bit. Whereas with these new ones, you’re good, you're good – and then suddenly you're not good.
Justin Chisholm So with the new t-foils you are saying the boat doesn’t slide at all?
Billy Gooderham It will slide, but it doesn't slide in a manner where you can catch it. What happens is you get a bit of a slide, and you have not enough foil immersion, then too much tip pierce, and you do a bit more of a slide, then, suddenly, just a massive nose dive.
Justin Chisholm In Sydney on the first day of the regatta there it seemed to be a really tough day for the flight controllers to get used to these foils?
Billy Gooderham There's a range of settings for where your foil cant needs to be based on what your boat speed is. There’s a big movement period after you've popped up on the foil, but before you're at the maximum speed that you will achieve when it's windier.
In that middle range of boat speed, there's a really wide range of where – optimally – you want to have the foil cant. It's like constantly having to change gears in a race car when you're on a really curvy, bendy, track.
In Sydney it was right in that range where you were hitting top speed at times – where you needed the foil cant to be all the way out – but there were also times when it was quite light – so you needed the foil cant to be really far in. So everyone was just constantly changing gears.
The t-foils have brought an added bit of functionality, in that, not only can the foils be raked backwards and forwards, but they can be canted in and out laterally. So that’s one more thing you have to worry about. So you're not only thinking about flying the boat with the rake and adjusting the rudders for pitch – you have to add that cant movement in there too.
So it's somewhat of a new muscle memory for everybody to acquire. It’s easy to get a bit lost and think you're canted far enough out, but you're not. Or you think you've brought it in enough, and you haven’t. You have to make sure you're shifting that gear, but then also not get lost and end up in the wrong gear.
Justin Chisholm Explain the effects of canting the t-foils in and out?
Billy Gooderham When you are canted straight down, the only thing that is preventing leeway is the vertical element of the foil – and the horizontal elevator is just giving you lift.
Canting out gives you more leeway prevention – because the elevator is driving you to windward more – but then it also gives you more righting moment. It’s like a double bonus in that respect: more righting moment means you can handle more power from the rig and that makes the boat go faster; but then you also get more leeway prevention so your VMG is improved too.
The danger is that if you are canted out and the boat slows down, then you might not have enough lifting force. That can lead to you venting the tip of the foil – and that’s where the boat just sort of trips over itself and you start to hobby horse. Then you have to slide the cant in and try to get it back under control. But then it’s a complicated process to re-accelerate.
Justin Chisholm Have your handheld flight control units changed?
Billy Gooderham It’s the same controller, but with a different button mapping. There were a bunch of buttons that had become redundant, but we're still on the controller. So we got rid of some of the redundant features on the center cluster, and now we have the cant function in there for both sides – so you can control the cant on both dagger boards. And then we've moved some of the other buttons around to make it so that the button mapping is a little bit more intuitive.
Justin Chisholm Those changes apply to all the boats. How was the change process managed?
Billy Gooderham We had a massive group chat with all the flight controllers in the fleet, that somehow I became the lead on. All 12 of us had to agree on something which was a little bit like herding cats. But we finally got to something that everybody sort of pretty much agreed upon.
Justin Chisholm Speaking of muscle memory, how do you train your fingers in between events?
Billy Gooderham I think everyone is different, but I do a lot of reflex work. I have a light pod setup that hangs up on the wall in front of my stationary bike. So I can be cycling and when a pod lights up you have to hit it. It means you can get your heart rate up but still be doing reflex oriented stuff.
What also helps is that on my actual physical controller itself, I have a lot of what I call finger feedback. I have a certain type of velcro on one button, so I know what that specific one feels like. Then I have a kind of padded material on another button that identifies that one too. It’s all so I can just feel and hit what I need to without having to look. But then with lots of repetition and hours on the water you get to a point where, even though the finger feedback is still on there, you probably don’t need it.
Justin Chisholm With the old foils, the higher you flew the boat, the faster you went. Is it still the same with the t-foils?
Billy Gooderham It’s a lot of the same technique. I know in America’s Cup world, they were trying to have it so that the center skeg on the boat ‘end-plated’ the rig, but we don't really have that option in SailGP. So we are still just trying to reduce wetted surface by flying higher. So basically, the closer to going over the edge you are, the faster you're going.
Justin Chisholm How has the introduction of the t-foils affected the crews’ starting techniques?
Billy Gooderham Again, the ability to cant the foil adds in one more layer of complexity. For the first reach you want as much righting moment as you can get – so you want the foil cant all the way outboard. But, you're going to be able to pop the boat in the air sooner if you have it all the way under the boat.
So it's about timing the ‘pop’, and timing the acceleration, so that you can basically ‘cheat’ the cant as far outboard as possible before the start gun goes, so that your acceleration happens faster. What you are aiming for is having the maximum outboard cant for the most amount of time on that first reach.
If you've managed that acceleration phase really well, you can hit the line with 75 percent of your cant already outboard, and you're probably gonna have a pretty good rounding at mark one. But if you’ve done a bad job, and you're late accelerating, you’ll have to pop late, you will still have the cant under the boat, and your acceleration will be slower.
It’s a technique that rewards precision in that acceleration phase in the start.
Justin Chisholm During the start process, what's the conversation like on board? Do you say much?
Billy Gooderham Not really. I’m mostly listening. We have our certain number that we can take off at. So if they say ‘pop, pop, pop’ I'll say ‘I need three build’, or ‘five build’, or whatever number I need to hit that target speed. Other than that, most of the time input comes into me, but I say very little.
I’m mostly just basically head down and focused on the bow of the boat and how far that is off the water. Every once in a while I’ll look at some of the electronics to make sure my settings are right. I think over the course of a race, I'll say about 10 words total.
Justin Chisholm I noticed there's a tiny bit of tape on each of the bows of the boat – that's what you're looking at?
Billy Gooderham Yes. I have a little red stripe on each bow – red, so that it's easy to differentiate between the color of the water – and that's basically what I gauge off in relation to how I’m flying the boat. We also have the immersion stripes on the dagger boards, and I’ll check in there every once in a while there, because that's a more binary visual.
Then I obviously check in with the electronic screen on the wing for the rudder rake numbers. I like to try and have my average rake number in my head, so that if I do get something a little bit wrong, I can kind of snap it back to that number, and I know I'll be kind of okay, right?
The foil cant number is on the big screen as well, so that I can look at the boat speed and then and my cant number together in a glance. If I'm in the right area, I instantly know I'm good. But if the boat speed and the cant numbers don't line up, then I know immediately that I need to make an adjustment.
Justin Chisholm In a scenario where you are trying to power over the top of another boat – or maybe hold off someone trying to do the same to you – are you aware of that situation yourself? Or are you relying on somebody to say, ‘let's try and roll him’, or ‘we need to stay fast here’?
Billy Gooderham The comms loop on the boat is usually very fluid. So there's almost always a running commentary of what's happening right now, what's happening next.
So though I might not be personally visually aware of that situation, usually, with the way the comms loop works between the guys and girls on the boat, I'm very much aware of the situation. They might be telling me, ‘push the boat really hard here because we need to get over someone’, or even ‘don't push too hard, because we're in a good situation and there's no need to risk it’.
We have what we call modes nine, 10 and 11. Nine is sort of we want to be going quick but no danger. 10 is full gas pedal. 11 is just put it way up in the sky and we'll see what happens.
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