LUNA ROSSA AT FULL BORE
With six crew positions, three either side, on their LEQ12 prototype, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli have serious options to bring in new crew-members, upskill the young talent that the team are deeply committed to fostering and on occasion give the ride of their life to design or engineering team members. Today out in Cagliari in an afternoon breeze that just built and built, it was the turn of Gwenolè Bernard, Head of Soft Wing Systems and Nicolas Carabelli from the Aero Analysis team to get a new perspective on life above the waves at eye-popping speeds.
In perfect spring conditions that showed why Cagliari would be such a great venue for America’s Cup racing, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli were at full bore, rocketing around the Bay and giving the new port foil a thorough workout – especially one the anemometer read into the high teens. Flight was incredibly stable both upwind and downwind in a straight line but as the breeze built into the afternoon and after the team had towed out offshore to come back inshore with a building sea state, things started to get a little loose with some notable bow stuffs particularly on the fast bear-aways.
One near capsize whilst a crewmember was checking systems below after a nosedive at pace was easily caught by the helms, Francesco Bruni and Jimmy Spithill, but it’s uncharacteristic to see the Italians anything but perfect on the bear-aways. The new foil for sure is looking twitchier through manoeuvres than before when the team were running a flat starboard foil (still there) and a sculpted long-span anhedral on the port wing and the sailors are certainly grappling with it as they push through high-speed turns. In a straight line on starboard tack or gybe, the new port foil with its highly pointed low-profile bulb leading back to a long span foil wing, dented immediately aft of the runoff, looks very stable and it was noticeable how steady it looked once in flight. The recon team also noted that the LEQ12 had an: “unsteady looking transition to foilborne in waves” and it’s these areas that the sailing team will be focussing on with one eye on the predicted swell in Barcelona.
Speaking afterwards Gwenolè Bernard gave an insightful interview and a glimpse into the design world saying: “I think it was a really good day. We are lucky to have a boat where we can bring guests and we were two lucky guys from the design team to be able to go onboard. So at the start, the day was quite light which was good for us to start like that and then as you can see we finished with a good sea breeze and the sea state increasing so yeah was a was really nice, very interesting and quite dynamic….I think the main idea of this kind of ride is to take us out of our computer world where maybe sometimes everything is a bit easier and understand what problems we can face while sailing. And, if I speak for myself, look at how people are acting on the sail and the control of the speed as well for the dynamic phase and I was ready to try to get a bit our head out and really get closer to the sailor’s feeling and understand better their need and why they are struggling in some areas and really trying to get better, merging what we have from the theory to what really we can see on the water.”
When pushed about what the team were looking at in regards the other teams, Gwenolè was cautious but certainly highlighted that the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli are watching the recon with interest saying: “It's difficult for me too to say what is interesting from the other teams because I think we want to keep it for us but for sure now we are seeing a lot of interesting stuff and the biggest mistake would be to only watch ourself and we really want to watch what the others are doing, try to consider why they are doing those things, and really put ourselves in a situation to not just only think about our system but what the reason they are doing things and I mean we know that in the teams there are smart guys as well so it's normal that we look at what they are doing.”
Everyone watching everyone. It’s the America’s Cup. A great and productive session for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli with plenty of take-aways for the data teams to analyse. More to come this week from the hard-charging Italians.
On Water Recon Unit Notes: The Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team rolled out their LEQ12 prototype at 11:45, stepped the mast and craned in undergoing the usual protocol checks by shore crew and sailors. As dock-out was scheduled at 13:00, the team hooked the M2 mainsail in the mast fittings and packed several foresails on the chase boats. The wind conditions in the Bay looked marginal for foiling with southerly breeze never exceeding 8kn and very flat waters.
On several occasions during the sailing session the LEQ12 hosted 6 crews while rotating sailors including two engineers on the joyride seats. The first sailing stint lasted approximately 30 min which saw the LEQ12 perform several manoeuvres in light air style and running through some foiling modes mostly inshore.
As the breeze almost faded completely, the LEQ12 was towed for 15 minutes searching for a sailable patch before heading slightly offshore to finally find some decent breeze of 14-16kn SSE with some short period chop of approx. 1m @ 4s. With these conditions, the team lowered the J1.5 and went for the J2. Once up and foiling after an unsteady looking transition to foilborne in waves, the LEQ12 headed further inshore where the breeze had filled in before the increasing sea state.
During this second foiling stint, the LEQ12 was observed sailing mostly straight line on the newly mounted wing pared to some manoeuvres, bear aways as well as heading up and perhaps some foiling modes. When the sea state finally filled in in front of Cagliari, all chase boats including Recon RIB could not quite keep up with the prototype allowing only distance observation. The LEQ12 has been observed several times stuffing the bow down while bearing away, checks below deck followed almost flipping over at low boat speeds with easy recovering by sailors.
Another productive sailing session for the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli team who called it a day after a long downwind run towards the home base. Within 60 nautical miles, a total foiling time of 118 minutes, 17 tacks and 12 gybes have been observed.
Dock out: 1310 Dock-in: 1700
Onboard Today
Helms: Francesco Bruni / Jimmy Spithill / Marco Gradoni
Crew: Andrea Tesei / Umberto Molineris / Vittorio Bissaro
Sails Used:
Mainsail M2 (MN2-1S): 3 hours 40 minutes
J1 (J1.5-1-A): 50 minutes
J2 (J2-B): 2 hours 15 minutes
Total Tacks: 17 - 11 foil-to-foil, 4 touch & go, 2 touchdowns.
Total Gybes: 12 – 9 foil-to-foil, 2 touch & go, 1 touchdown.
Conditions: 13:30 S 5-7kn/ 14:45 SSE 14-16kn / 15:30 SSE 15-17kn
Weather PM: 16-24°c Sunny.
Sea-State: 1-1.3m @ 4 seconds period. Beaufort 4