FOIL MODS FOR ‘AMERICA’
NYYC American Magic rolled out yet another upgrade to their starboard foil on Friday on the AC40 in LEQ12 mode out in Pensacola for a brilliant session that saw Lucas Calabrese take the helm for the first time along with Andrew Campbell who also had a turn. Calabrese and Campbell are key Flight Controllers for American Magic and these are valuable days for the team to build in knowledge and experience.
The relentless upgrade programme for the chromium-coloured starboard foil continued with the addition of a new tip on the outer foil and a neat, moulded camera sited mid-way up the foil arm trained on the outer wing. The team are really far down the foil evaluation route and it’s continual refinement of the concept that they are after. In recent sessions, ‘America’ has looked skittish and at times unstable on the port tack with the starboard foil immersed particularly offwind, but those problems are beginning to get ironed out and today’s session saw the sailors pushing through a whole heap of modes with some aggressive bow-down and even more acute windward heel, very much their signature, looking to be increasingly favoured.
Where the team still struggle though on the new foil is in the bear-aways and harden-ups at pace. Early flight saw a nosedive and a further two more during the day and some long stops on the water for tweaks and modifications took place. As the wind increased through the afternoon and the team switched down to the very-favoured J4 jib, ‘America’ looked far more comfortable with the sailors able to enjoy long flight and some decent manoeuvres. Work still be done for sure.
Andrew Campbell, always a perfect interviewee, gave an interesting assessment of the day saying: “There’s a lot of things to be done on days like today when it's so steady and the sea breeze is in and locked in and the boat’s, you know, performing well we can go through a lot of setting changes that make subtle differences to our performance that only show up in the data with those small changes. So, it's a perfect day to have a small change make an impact on our performance and be able to see that curve through the data at the end of the day. That was our priority today just to make sure we were kind of hitting that. Oftentimes, the optimums are really soft, you know, you'll see a few different angles are giving you a really very similar number and it's only days like today where you can see which ones are actually the best.”
Andrew talked through the team’s priorities on the water saying: “We didn't have any breakages, we're just slowly kind of getting through a lot of the systems things and we’ve been using the boat a lot so you know we're starting to get into the maintenance schedule a bit and making sure that the boat’s running fully functional for every session that we can use it so getting it all organised, making sure all our ducks in a row, is a high priority for us.”
Talking about the new foil upgrade, Andrew offered: “Yeah, there's a new feature to the end of that foil that is something we're trying to look at and test out, and the bulge is helping us to get a look at it so there's a camera in there that's helping us get a good view of it.”
The Americans are far down the development pathway making incremental gains along the way and with a drone in the sky monitoring sail shape and pitch modes over the five-hour session, by end of the day they looked back to their best and clocked in a flight time of some 144 minutes with top speeds downwind touching 43 knots.
Impressive all round, NYYC American Magic close out their April programme with the team eyeing the move to Barcelona in mid-May before the preliminary regattas in Vilanova i La Geltrú and Jeddah coming fast.
Recon Notes: The AC40 came out of the shed at 0845. A modification was observed on the starboard foil (winglet on outboard side of foil see pics). A second modification was the addition of a camera on the foil arm. America docked out at 10:45 and began sailing at 11:25. The breeze was 7k but filled in throughout the day to around 15k in the afternoon.
The AC40 experienced a minor bow stuff almost immediately after her initial take off. There were two more notable bow stuffs during the day. The team carried the J1 for 55 minutes before the breeze built and switched to the J2. The breeze built to 10-15k by 13:00 and the J3 went up.
It seemed like the AC40 had some systems issues as the team took some longer breaks than usual (12:17 to 13:08 and 11:55 to 12:13). The early part of the day America looked nervous on both boards (inconsistent manoeuvres and harden ups and bear aways). The latter part of the AC40 looked a lot more stable and the team went back to the long runs on one board. The end of the day's sailing was called at 16:20.
In all, America completed 45 manoeuvres, 12 W/L's, sailed approximately 83nm, and had a total flying time of 144 minutes. Top speeds were approximately 33k upwind and 43k downwind.
Conditions: 11:00 SE 7k/ 12:00 S 7-10k/ 12:38 SW 10-12k/ 13:00 SW 13k/ 14:03 SW 10-15k. Wind speed measured 8ft above sea level using a handheld anemometer.
Weather AM: 70° Sunny.
Weather PM: 77° Sunny.
Sea State AM: 1-2ft chop.
Sea State PM: 1-2ft chop.
Total Tacks: 29 – 20 foil-to-foil, 6 touch & go, 3 touchdowns.
Total Gybes: 16 – 13 foil-to-foil, 3 touch & go, 0 touchdowns.
Recon Notes: America was on foil for a total of 149 minutes (1, 1, 4, 17, 5, 34, 4, 31, 7, 3, 13, 1, 5, and 23 minutes respectively)
Take off speed: 15 knots at 90° TWA (True Wind Angle)
Recon Notes: Initial take off was self, 13 additional self-up’s, 0 tow up's.
Onboard AC40 Today:
Helms: Paul Goodison / Andrew Campbell
Trimmers: Lucas Calabrese / Michael Menninger
Sails Used:
Mainsail (AM-LEQ MS1): 5 hours 15 minutes
Jib (J1): 55 minutes
Jib (J3): 3 hours 10 minutes
Jib (J4 – LEQ J2.1): 55 minutes
Dock-Out: 1045 Dock-In: 1645