South Africa’s All-Women Sailing Team Set to Make Global History

Photo Credit: Team Granate Instagram

An Olympian, a Cape to Rio champion and an all-women South African crew are preparing to make history as the continent’s only representatives at a prestigious new international sailing championship.

Western Cape, South Africa (06 July 2026) – What happens when an Olympian and a Cape to Rio champion combine forces? South Africa is about to find out. And if the energy at the Royal Cape Yacht Club on Friday night is anything to go by, the rest of the world should take note.

In September, an all-women South African crew known as Team Granate will line up in Newport, Rhode Island, at the inaugural New York Yacht Club Women’s International Championship, one of the most prestigious new events in world sailing. The team was announced Friday night at the Royal Cape Yacht Club in Table Bay Harbour.

South Africa was selected as one of just 20 teams from a field of 48 international applicants, and it is the only African entry on the start line.

At the helm is Dominique Provoyeur, an Olympian with a lifetime of high-performance racing behind her. Alongside her on the crew is 26-year-old Yonela Temela from Khayelitsha, fresh from making history as part of the team that won the 2026 Cape to Rio, the first sailing academy team, and the first crew from underprivileged backgrounds, to claim the famous transatlantic race.

Remarkably, they did it without a boom, the crucial spar that controls the mainsail.

“We break boundaries and we made history,” Temela says of that Cape to Rio triumph. Now she’s setting her sights across another ocean.

For Provoyeur, who skippers the boat and shares captaincy duties with co-captain Robin Patrick, the significance of the moment is not lost.

“It’s incredibly huge. It’s never happened in the world, actually,” she says of the championship, which brings together 20 of the top women’s teams from across the globe. “Coming from South Africa, we’re obviously the only African entry. It’s a first time for us, first time for the world, really.”

The format is what makes this regatta such a pure test of talent. Every team will race identical IC37 yachts supplied by the New York Yacht Club. Think of it as Formula One where everyone gets the same car. No budget advantages. No equipment arms race. Just skill, teamwork and nerve.

“Definitely down to skill, boat handling, crew work, communication,” Provoyeur explains, adding that tactics will be everything in Newport’s bay, with its shifting sea breezes and currents.

Who does she consider their biggest rival?

Not the Americans. Not the Australians. “I think I’m more competing against ourselves,” she says. “If we can do what we’ve been training for the last couple of months on the race course, I think we’ll come out OK.”

Temela’s road to Newport is the kind of story that reminds you why sport matters.

She arrived at the Royal Cape Yacht Club in 2016 through the Makabini education programme, which exposed township learners to different career paths. She put her hand up for the sailing academy simply to see where it might lead.

“I honestly thought it would just be a phase,” she laughs. “Like joining soccer back in Khayelitsha, you do the small tournaments during holidays and that’s it.”

A decade later, she watched her name go up on screen (on Friday night) as part of the final Team Granate crew, mere months after conquering the Atlantic.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” she admits. “When I hopped on the boat, it was people I’ve only seen sailing in the biggest competitions, the Olympics and all that. I felt like maybe I’m not going to make the team. But the announcement made me feel confident that I can actually do what I want to do.”

With Women’s Month around the corner in August, both sailors are keenly aware of what this campaign represents.

“I definitely feel we have a responsibility to show that sailing is not just a sport for men,” says Temela. “The younger generation can look up to us.”

The squad, whittled down from 23 to a final 12, faces a punishing build-up: sailing three times a week, intensive gym work to handle the 15 to 22 knots of breeze expected in Newport, and 11 consecutive days of sailing once they arrive in the United States, peaking with at least two races a day during the five-day regatta from 12 to 19 September.

For Provoyeur, the campaign is also deeply personal.

“Most of my sailing has been done on small keelboats, three or four crew members. To take a team of ten is way bigger than I ever dreamed of. But I’d like to put myself up against the best in the world and see how we come out.”

What is Temela’s message to the next six-year-old dreaming in Khayelitsha, the Eastern Cape, or anywhere in between?

“Any opportunity that comes your way, take it. You don’t know where it’s going to take you. And if it doesn’t work for you, it’s fine, you take the next one.”

Come September, an entire country will be watching where this one takes them.