TWITCHY AC40 (OR IS IT NOW AN LEQ12)
Diving into the sea of technology, pretty quickly you can get swamped. Design teams warn about the dangers of haring down blind alleyways, of programmes being de-railed by the sight of what others are doing and the history of the America’s Cup, even the most recent history, bears testament to those that are the real innovators and those that are trailing.
So, it’s interesting to see that sailing style and technique is being focussed on by the current holders, Emirates Team New Zealand, in their early development phase as they work through tweaks and nuances of the AC40 – or should we call it an LEQ12 now? With moderate adaptation to the cockpits via the introduction of a separator panel replete with new controls, most notably today, onboard tablets were being held by Andy Maloney and Blair Tuke in the aft cockpits.
But sailing style is high on the agenda for the sailors with the team doubling down on time on the water and concentrating on co-ordination through the manoeuvres. It’s an electric watch at high pace and today saw some spectacular failures resulting in dunks and splash-downs as well as some ‘how did they do that’ moments. Progress on the water is rapid and it’s an evolving art that we are watching before us.
On a near three-hour morning session to catch the rising breeze and test the cross-overs, the ETNZ AC40 docked out at 9am and blitzed off into the harbour under the big J1 jib before quickly changing down to the J2 as the breeze built to 10 knots before settling for the J3 for the majority of the session. Clearly those crucial crossovers have been found with the J1 effectively being just a tool to enable take-off in the super-light stuff but quickly becoming drag in anything over 8-10 knots of breeze. The J2, similarly, has a small range and the trade-off between drag and drive becomes quickly apparent. Above 12-15 knots and the AC40s are clearly into J3 territory and although not available, thoughts of a J4 are not far from the sailor’s minds as they generate such huge power in the mainsail – which is only increasing as the control systems get better and more refined.
The team blitzed through 14 tacks with 13 being foil-to-foil and just one touch-and-go whilst on the gybes, usually the most solid of manoeuvres, the tale of the tape was 23 completed with 15 being foil-to-foil, six being touch-and-go and 2 splash-downs. You can see where the sailing technique is being honed and the focus looks to be slicker gybes and more acute exit angles. Tricky stuff.
But getting time on the water with a settled team and two very complimentary drivers in Nathan Outteridge and Pete Burling is something that will be scaring the horses in the Cup world. They exude confidence and have that almost innocent quality of being willing to try new things, to push boundaries and find a style of sailing that is going to be hard to replicate.
Speaking afterwards, Nathan Outteridge confirmed what we saw on the water today: “As we go through our development phase, we’re starting to think about how we sail. We’ve come up with a few different ways that the four of us can sail this boat, whether you’re doing things on the windward or leeward side and who’s doing what in manoeuvres. We’ve just been experimenting and today was really interesting because some of the things we thought would be easy to do were a little trickier than we thought and some things that we thought would were quite hard, felt natural. That’s the beauty of these boats, we can go out there, try a few things, find the positive and negatives, come in, have a think about it and make a plan for the next sailing session. That’s what this boat is designed for as much as it is about development and to make the boat go faster, it’s also about how we sail the boat and how we interact together – hence why you saw some glamours and some not-so-good’s today!”
Keep on eye on Emirates Team New Zealand. Everyone else is. (Magnus Wheatley)
On-Water Recon Unit Notes: Good session on the harbour between A buoy and Akarana yacht club. Boat looked fast but twitchy. some very slick manoeuvres but also some shockers. Trying differing techniques. Partitions in cockpits seam to carry 2x tablets and some buttons. Sails looked good across the range with no leach flutter observed. Very flat. Mast looked to be at the middle of rake setting
Sails:
M1 (OD): 3 hours
J1 (OD): 20 minutes
J2 (OD): 35 minutes
J3 (OD): 1 hour 30 minutes
Dock-out: 9am Dock-in: 11.45am
Wind Strength: 8-16 knots
Take off speed: 15 knots at 80 degrees TWA (True Wind Angle)
Total Tacks: 14 Total Gybes: 23