RUDDER DAMAGE FOR THE SWISS

The recon unit were on station and saw the incident, but the cause remains somewhat of a mystery. The AC75 was at a hefty pace on a blast reach when suddenly the sailors felt “strong drag in the bear-away” and the boat came down quickly off the foils. The Chase Boat tenders were in fast and as a precaution put water-pumps onboard which weren’t needed and with the sails rapidly lowered, a tow line was attached, and the second tender acted as steerage to coax BoatZero back to the base at the mouth of the Port Vell.

Dockside, the boat was descended upon by technicians to thoroughly analyse what had had occurred. First thoughts ranged from the boat hitting a submerged object, but this looked to be discounted as no noticeable sign of damage was seen on the leading edge of the rudder. Structural failure seemed the most likely conclusion, but the Alinghi Red Bull Racing team will now go into a period of heavy analysis to get to the bottom of the issue.

Arthur Rozand, a key member of the Swiss design team in the VPP department gave a brief analysis and when asked to expand on the cause he offered: “The rudder let go after the bear-away, now we are looking at it and checking everything that happened basically, but now there’s not an answer I can give you.” Asked if there was much structural damage, Arthur confirmed: “Not much. We were quite lucky so it should not be too hard to fix it.”

Good news indeed as up to the incident, Alinghi Red Bull Racing were looking mighty, foiling fast above a choppy swell of between 0.6m and 1m that meant the chase boats struggled to keep pace. Dean Barker was onboard BoatZero overseeing Arnaud Psarofaghis and Nicolas Charbonnier in the helm seats whilst a little bit of crew rotation was observed with Nicolas Rolaz in the uncustomary trimming position. The team confirmed to the recon unit that due to the high number of on-water days the sailors are completing at the moment, that it was important to have crewmembers cross-trained for contingency. Smart move by the Swiss.

The programme will now switch to the AC40 and as Arthur Rozand so eloquently put it: “We are quite lucky to have a lot of boats, so we'll have fun on the AC40, that's the next step.”

The W Hotel was not lit up in the Alinghi Red Bull Racing red this evening, so sailing is presumably not scheduled for Friday. The midnight oil meanwhile is burning down at the Port Vell behind the shed doors as the superb shore team do their thing.

Long weekend ahead.

On-Water Recon Unit Notes: Alinghi Red Bull Racing rolled out their AC75 at 08:45 and prepared the yacht for sailing. With a ‘Garbi’ thermal wind forecast to peak in the mid-teens, the M1 mainsail and J3 jib were craned onto the yacht after a series of systems tests at the dock. There was focus on preparing the jib track, which later in the day required further attention while at sea. The team docked out at 11:30 and raised the mainsail in the port, just off the base.

Sailing commenced an hour after dock-out with a downwind followed by a short pause to prepare for an upwind/downwind leg. The team stopped, took a 40-minute break to adjust systems onboard, before attempting to sail again. A gybe was put in, but the team stopped again to remove battens and spent another 35 minutes on the jib clew. Once all sorted, the team sailed their first lap of a 2 nautical mile upwind/downwind course.

They started off with a tack and bear-away, to a ‘touchdown gybe’, but followed with good momentum downwind to the mark. After a clean rounding, they tacked upwind with the hull out of the water for the majority of the leg. No chase boats on the water could catch them on port tack upwind in the swell, which had grown to 0.6m+, offset by about 20°-30° to port (TWA SSW , Swell direction S). For this reason, the recon unit were not able to reach the upwind mark ahead of the yacht to film the upwind mark rounding.

After rounding, the team gybed and brought the yacht down. They then set off on a reach towards the beach, when suddenly steering was lost and the yacht crashed down, at which point the recon unit was stuck trying to re-calibrate the camera gimbal. It is not clear as to exactly what happened, however, according to the sailors on board, they were sailing in a straight line and suddenly felt strong drag in the bear-away, causing the yacht to crash down. Pumps were brought onboard to extract any water, though not much was taken onboard. Chase Alpha was used to steer the stern of the boat, as the Chase Bravo was not able to tow and direct the yacht back to port.

When the yacht was brought back to base, it was clear that the rudder stock broke from the quadrant and through the fairing. Hitting an unidentified object in the water has not been ruled out, though there does not appear to be any damage on the leading edge of the rudder. It is most likely a structural issue, to be confirmed.

As an aside, Nicolas Rolaz was training in the trimmer position. The team have started to practice this decision as a redundancy measure in case any sailor falls ill now that the team is training almost every day. Dean Barker was on board watching over the crew as they trained, with Pietro Sibello on Chase Bravo.  Ernesto Bertarelli was on board Chase Alpha in sailing kit. The team spent almost four and a half hours on the water, covering over 37 NM and top speeds over 40 knots.

The W Hotel is not lit red tonight, and there is no indication on sailing tomorrow.

Onboard Today

Driving Group: Arnaud Psarofaghis / Nicolas Charbonnier

Trimmers: Bryan Mettraux / Nicolas Rolaz

Power Group: Théry Schir / Florian Trüb / Barnabé Delarze / Nils Theuninck

Recon Notes: Dean Barker on board observing as passenger. Pietro Sibello and Ernesto Bertarelli on separate chase boats.

Conditions: Garbi - Thermal breeze - 10-12kn SSW @ 12:20, 6-8kn SSW @ 13:30, 8-10kn SSW @ 13:50, 11-13kn SSW @ 15:25. Weather AM: 13°c, Mostly Cloudy. Weather PM: 14°c, Intermittent Clouds. Sea State AM: 0.4m south swell. Sea State PM: 0.6-1m south swell.

Sails Used:

M1 (M1-1R): 3 hours 40 minutes

J3 (J3-1R): 2 hours 50 minutes

Total Tacks: 15 - 8 foil-to-foil, 5 touch & go, 2 touchdowns.

Total Gybes: 14 – 6 foil-to-foil, 2 touch & go, 6 touchdowns.

Recon Notes:

12:30 – 13:20 Sailing (5 Tacks - Fully Foiling, 4 Tacks - Touch & Go, 1 Tack – Touch Down, 4 Gybes - Fully Foiling, 2 Gybes - Touch & Go, 3 Gybe - Touch Down)

14:00 – 14:05 Sailing (1 Tack – Touch Down)

14:40 – 15:05 Sailing (3 Tacks - Fully Foiling, 1 Tack - Touch & Go, 2 Gybes - Fully Foiling, 3 Gybes - Touch Down)

Dock-Out: 1130 Dock-In: 1555