A ‘RACING RACING’ BOAT
You will be hard pressed to find a more elegant sight in world sailing this year than the INEOS Britannia AC40 ‘Athena’ gracefully, elegantly, effortlessly flying against a sepia backdrop of Palma Bay, late afternoon in early Spring. What a sight to behold. The team waited for the breeze all day but when it came, as forecast, bringing in 13-14 knots under the cliffs of El Arenal, the crack test team of Giles Scott, Dylan Fletcher-Scott, Bleddyn Mon and Leigh MacMillan had Athena on its foiling knife edge, pushing hard to find the limits.
The sheer fact that this new class of boat has proven so versatile almost immediately belies its technicality and the skill required to sail one. The best sailors on planet earth, representing the very pinnacle of the sport of sailing, the America’s Cup, do have a habit of making it look easy. And as they’re finding their sea-legs with the AC40, we can only speculate at where these teams will start to find the extra tweaks in sailing technique to propel them to the front of the fleet when racing begins in earnest towards the end of 2023 in the class.
On today’s form, INEOS Britannia are bringing through some seriously good next-generation talent to the foiling world. Dylan Fletcher-Scott has seriously impressed in the manner befitting the current International Moth World Champion. Ben Cornish too, has proven to be quite outstanding when handed the helm whilst Giles Scott, double Olympic Gold medallist in the Finn class simply has talent to burn. What gels these three is attitude, and what we’re seeing is a relaxed INEOS Britannia brimming with talent on the water, fused with first class shore and technical teams. It’s a potent mix.
Today’s tale of the tape says it all really: a 100% success rate foil-to-foil on 17 tacks, and an 83% success rate combining foil-to-foil and touch & go’s on the gybes (as the wind faded). Impressive numbers and the way that Bleddyn Mon and Leigh MacMillan are trimming is to watch excellence in action. This is a team very much on the up and the sailors are more than rising to the challenge.
Ben Cornish, another cool customer and current 5.5 Metre World Champion, gave a typically open and frank interview post-sailing, very much the hallmark of the INEOS Britannia team, and after his second day on the AC40 he was enthused, saying: “Yeah nice boat…you know it's a different beast to what we've got in the shed in a number of areas and in what the crew are doing and how you sail it, it's interesting for us and we’re learning something new… you never go on the water without a test list so today was no different to that and with that good breeze the guys ticked through everything they wanted to…it's a well refined racing boat and there’s stuff on there which is very good and you want to explore the ranges of what it's capable of. There's plenty to learn.”
Looking to the future, Ben’s keen to get racing and can foresee close action, saying: “I think everyone's going to be very well oiled, people are going to be racing these boats slick and you can see it just from a few days that manoeuvres are fast, the two board times are very short, and people are going to be throwing these boats around the course. So, I think what we are going to see when they start racing it's going to be ‘racing racing’ as opposed to a drag race. It could be exciting.”
INEOS Britannia start the week again on a high. The weather looks relatively light in Palma for the early part of this week but by Thursday the wind switches south and should bring in some steady breeze. Watch this space, Athena is rocking now – ‘racing racing’ is going to be very interesting. (Magnus Wheatley)
On Water Recon Notes: The INEOS Britannia sailors and their on-water support team had to work hard to get the most out of today’s afternoon sessions, with multiple sail changes and a prolonged period of waiting for a forecast 15 knot southerly to arrive.
After docking out at 1300 with a rumoured plan of doing some practice course racing around a pair of orange buoys we spotted in the back of the team’s largest chase boat, in the end the team had to reposition several times to get the earliest access to the new breeze which came on fast at 1545.
Having quickly changed from the J1 to the J2, the crew – helmsmen Giles Scott and trialist Dylan Fletcher, with trimmers Bleddyn Mon and Leigh McMillan – were immediately up on foils for a series of high-speed laps of Palma Bay – including 17 foiling tacks and 12 gybes (mostly foiling but with a couple of touchdowns earlier in the afternoon and a pair of wild ones with splashdowns later in the day. With the breeze beginning to fade, time was called on the day at 1730.
Dock out: 1304 Dock-in: 1800
Conditions:
PM: 7 - 15 knots 170 degrees. Sunny 15°c - 19°c
Onboard Today
Helms: Giles Scott / Dylan Fletcher-Scott / Ben Cornish
Crew: Leigh McMillan / Bleddyn Mon
Sails Used:
Mainsail (M1-1): 4 hours
J1 (J1-1): 1 hour
J2 (J2-1): 1 hour 30 minutes
Total Tacks: 17 – 17 foil-to foil
Total Gybes: 12 – 8 foil-to-foil, 2 touch & go, 2 touchdowns
Recon Notes: Take offs all self. Take-off speed: 16-20 knots at 50-60° TWA