NEW TOP SPEED IN PALMA
Sir Ben Ainslie was back onboard the ‘Silver Bullet’ T6 today on a chilly and breezy Palma Bay for a testing session that, similar to the other teams right now sailing in the LEQ12 mode, concentrated firmly on foil testing, pitch sweeps and cant angles. The British prototype was pushed to its limit with a new, and undisclosed, top speed thought to be into the mid 40 knot bracket but what was noticeable with the programme today was the concentration on modes of the boat.
It was a full-on testing day with the team going through various bow up/stern down or bow down modes and a variety of ride heights and cant angles that flight controllers Leigh McMillan and Iain Jensen put the boat into as they sought to extract the maximum amount of core and periphery data to inform the technical engineers working on the foils for the team’s AC75 that will shortly go into build.
Speaking afterwards, a rather chilly Ben offered: “We were just trying different pitch sweeps with different board angles and so on to really give the design engineers the best idea of how those foils are performing and then that relates into how you go and design your race foils.” The variable, shifty conditions today called for the biggest J1 jib to be used throughout the afternoon and didn’t faze the testing programme as Ben continued: “It's hard when you’re trying to test and the wind’s changing around quite a lot, fortunately for us we were doing a kind of testing where actually the accuracy of the wind didn’t matter too much, it was more to do with how the foils were reacting to different speeds and pitches.”
T6 looked weapons-grade all afternoon on a two-and-a-half-hour session over six runs with the sailors taking the intensity level up once again. Mainsail control was rapid and accurate with the team noticeably fanning through gusts to de-power and re-power with no loss of speed whilst the gremlins of Friday looked to have been solved with the team’s jib track arrangement working perfectly. The team were ripping around the Bay with far more windward heel upwind than we’ve seen recently, a result of the foil cant angles, and manoeuvres were tight and controlled with easy foil-to-foil manoeuvres at near-perfect success rates. In terms of manoeuvrability and easy of flight, T6 is easily up there with the best.
Talking about the number of sailing days that the British have completed (22) in relation to the other teams, Ben very much saw the bigger picture saying: “We were obviously later than we wanted to be getting the boat going…but now it feels like we're getting some really good hours under our belt, we’re certainly ticking off a lot of those testing items that we wanted to and we're getting ourselves back on schedule. I think we're going to see that with all the other teams where they have moments where they have an issue or not getting great conditions and now that will come and go as we go through the next 18 months.”
And looking forward to the contest in what is now just over 18 months away, Ainslie has been impressed with the standards of the other syndicates saying: “I think they've all been impressive actually. They’ve obviously got different setups but you know I’ve been really impressed with the other teams and great to see the French team announced. I'm sure they're going to be competitive with what sounds like a Kiwi design package so it's looking like it's going to be a real tough battle for Barcelona in 18 months.” (Magnus Wheatley)
On Water Recon Notes: INEOS Britannia’s 22nd sailing day saw the British team cram in six valuable fast foiling runs into a two-and-a-half-hour afternoon session sailed in a shifty and gusty 9 - 14 knot northerly breeze and with a predominantly flat sea state.
According to skipper and helmsman Ben Ainslie, despite being comparatively short, the session proved nevertheless fruitful in terms of data gathering. Ainslie also alluded to them setting a new top speed for the silver T6 LEQ12. Although coy about the precise figure on the speedo, the recon rib’s top speed was a fraction over 43 knots.
Worthy of note is the fact that the entire session was carried out using the J1 headsail. Once again, the crew – Ainslie and Giles Scott as helmsmen, with Leigh McMillan and Iain Jensen on flight control and trim – put the boat through its paces in a variety of pitch angles (flying mainly at a pronounced bow up/stern down angle – but also occasionally bow down). In terms of manoeuvres, other than a couple of displacement tacks in between runs, all the other tacks and gybes were slick fully foiling turns. The only slip ups observed were two spectacular high speed splashdowns within a few seconds of each other while high-speed reaching on port.
Dock out: 1255 Dock-in: 1720
Conditions: 1340 045 9-10 knots. 1352 000 9 knots, 1430 330 11-12 knots, 1530 330 13-14 knots. Cloudy with rain showers 12C
Onboard Today
Helms: Giles Scott / Sir Ben Ainslie
Crew: Leigh McMillan / Iain Jensen
Sails Used:
Mainsail (MN1-1P): 2 hours 30 minutes
J1 (J1-1): 2 hours
Total Tacks: 7 – 4 foil-to foil, 3 touchdowns
Total Gybes: 3 – 3 foil-to-foil
Recon Notes: Multiple self-take-offs.
Take-off speed: 13 knots (estimated) self at 50 degrees TWA (True Wind Angle)