When the Harbour Becomes a Stadium: SailGP Is Coming Back to Halifax

I Won a Rum Competition and It Changed My Life

I didn't grow up sailing. I won a sales contest. The prize was a trip to Bermuda for the 2017 America's Cup, courtesy of Gosling's Rum — and I showed up with zero expectations and a very good Dark 'n Stormy in my hand. Then a 15-metre catamaran lifted completely off the water and flew past me at 90 kilometres an hour, and something in my brain rewired itself permanently. That was the moment I understood what sport could do to a city, to a crowd, to a person standing on a shoreline who had no idea they were about to become obsessed.

The League Nobody Saw Coming

When Russell Coutts and Larry Ellison launched SailGP in 2018, the sailing world was skeptical. Annual grand prix racing? National teams? Close-to-shore crowds? It sounded ambitious to the point of naive. I believed in it from season one — Sydney, 2019 — and I haven't looked away since. Today 12 of the 13 teams are privately owned, with valuations climbing from $5 million at inception into eight-figure territory. The skeptics went quiet. The crowds got louder. And Halifax — our Halifax — just locked in its place on a global calendar that includes Sydney, Rio, New York, and Saint-Tropez.

50,000 People. Sold Out in Minutes. Our Harbour.

In 2024, I stood on the Halifax waterfront with my friend Andrew Holmes — the global brand ambassador for Gosling's Rum — and watched this city do something I'll never forget. More than 50,000 spectators packed both sides of the harbour, tickets sold out within minutes, and hotel bookings across the region surged by more than 25 percent — with over half the crowd coming from outside the city. Andrew has been to events on every continent. He turned to me on that waterfront and didn't need to say a word. The look said everything. Halifax didn't just host SailGP. Halifax became SailGP.

This One's Personal

The Canada Sail Grand Prix returns June 20–21, 2026, with an expanded Race Stadium and Georges Island as the backdrop. This time, I'll be watching with my best friend Emily Gosling — yes, that Gosling family, the one behind the rum that started all of this for me in Bermuda nine years ago. From a sales contest prize to standing on a Nova Scotia shoreline with the family behind the bottle — if that isn't the universe telling you something about the power of extraordinary experiences, I don't know what is.

We Build This. Together. Forever.

Halifax is not a city that gets lucky. Halifax is a city that earns it — through culture, community, and an ocean that reminds everyone who visits exactly where they are. At Cellar Events, everything we do is built around the belief that the right experience in the right place can change someone's life. I know it changed mine. As Canada's SailGP flight controller Billy Gooderham put it: "Whether you actually sail or not, everybody knows what sailing is around here. We're a province surrounded by the ocean." SailGP belongs here. The question now is what else we build around it — and how we make sure Halifax never stops being a city where the world wants to show up. cbc

June 2026. I'll see you on the harbour.