Before her first visit to New York a year ago, Nicole van der Velden was warned about what to expect. It wasn’t the crowded subways, gruff locals or long lines at museums. It was the unpredictable wind patterns, the powerful cross currents and distracting sightlines.
Ms. van der Velden is a professional sailboat racer, and much of her time in the area last year was spent on the murky green and blue waters of New York Harbor, where she helped her Spanish sailboat team, Los Gallos, win the 2025 New York Sail Grand Prix. Out in the chop in the third-busiest port in the country, just minutes before that race started, Ms. van der Velden took a moment to spot the Statue of Liberty in front of her, the Brooklyn Bridge behind her, and that famous skyline.
“You’ve seen it in so many movies, and then it’s all around you,” she said. “It’s such a unique and dynamic place for a race.”
The race, likened by many to Formula 1 on the water, is part of a spring and summer of major sporting spectacles in the New York region that includes the Knicks’ march to the N.B.A. finals and soccer’s World Cup in New Jersey, all on land. Out on the briny this weekend, SailGP took over the harbor for an exotic sailboat race that features high tech catamarans careening across the upper bay, their vivid colors stamped against some of the most recognizable scenery in the world.
“When people think of a sailboat race, they think of white triangles on a blue background far from shore, slow-paced, hard to understand, elitist,” said Sir Russell Coutts, who founded SailGP seven years ago along with Larry Ellison, the tech billionaire. “We’ve shortened the races and moved them close to shore where you can see the speed, which is breathtaking,” Mr. Coutts said.
The pace of the boats, generated by sails that resemble airplane wings turned on their ends, can be stunning. Mr. Coutts recalled that during a meeting in Shanghai a few years ago, he showed a video of the races to a minister for sports, who exclaimed, “No, no, we can’t have power boats on the bund.” Mr. Coutts said he assured the minister that all the boats were wind-powered only.
But it can still get dicey out there. Only 12 of the 13 teams are competing in New York because of a significant crash in Auckland, New Zealand, three months ago. The New Zealand boat collided with the French boat, and two athletes went to the hospital, one with a compound leg fracture.
The New York course has its own set of challenges. Ms. van der Velden said that the confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers, along with waters sliding in from under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge — and even the variable salinity of the water — also make the upper bay unique for sailing.
On Saturday, high winds meant a modified race, with only three boats able to compete. The problem was not on the course itself. It was deemed too dangerous to crane the rest of the multimillion dollar F50s into the water from their staging area in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
“It was very stressful,” said Diego Botín, the driver of the Spanish boat. “But we got some racing in and the boat is still in one piece.”
Normally, the main obstacle is heavy traffic, because even on water, it’s still New York. The port is the busiest on the East Coast and is often crammed with hundreds of vessels, including massive container ships, barges, cruise ships and pleasure craft. For the duration of the two-day race, much of the area was cordoned off by the U.S. Coast Guard, beginning Saturday morning.
The Coast Guard sent a notification on Thursday alerting all mariners, from oil tankers to kayakers, that it would establish an exclusion zone inside the harbor that is roughly the size of the Lower East Side, just west and south of Governors Island. Logan Kaczmarek, a chief petty officer in the Coast Guard’s public affairs department, said the agency will have several vessels patrolling the area to ensure no one no one wanders into the race area.
This kind of exclusion is rare but not unheard of. There will be much more extensive restrictions in July for the parade of tall ships scheduled to enter the harbor for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States on July 4.
Some large ships were anchored south of the race area and the Staten Island Ferry was routed to the Brooklyn side of Governors Island, instead of cruising past the Statue of Liberty. Dozens of smaller ferries, private boats and pleasure craft, and a few intrepid jet skiers, were also dotted around the upper bay, but were required to steer clear of the racing area.
“If Uncle John wants to take his boat out, there’s not a lot we can do about that,” Petty Officer Kaczmarek said. “But they won’t be able to get within the exclusion zone set up for the race.”
Other spectators watched from the western edge of Governors Island. The race, which resumes Sunday, is the fourth SailGP race in New York, an event that some local sailors have envisioned for decades.
Michael Fortenbaugh, the pioneering commodore of the Manhattan Yacht Club, has been racing sailboats in the upper bay since he started the club in 1987. His intention then was to reintroduce sailing in New York Harbor after it had essentially disappeared about a century ago. Now, taut white sails are a relatively frequent site on those waters.
He sailed competitively for Princeton University in the 1980s and said people thought he was crazy when he started sailing in the harbor. But he has seen the sport grow steadily. Now, he said, he would use the club’s 150-foot mega-yacht, The Arabella, as a spectator boat for SailGP.
“It’s a magnificent place to sail and race,” he said. “The energy and the beauty of New York City is also present in New York Harbor.”
David Waldstein is a Times reporter who writes about the New York region, with an emphasis on sports.
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