MAGIC PENSACOLA
The last sailing day for NYYC American Magic on beautiful Pensacola Bay, Florida, was a long one with the sailing team keen to extract as much time on the water as possible with their new port foil. In a session that lasted over five hours and saw ‘America’ cover in excess of 70 nautical miles, the team pushed through a myriad of tow-tests and full-bore foiling, driving through the cant sweeps, pitch angles and hull trim with noticeable very low flight upwind – a trend that is rapidly becoming the norm across all the teams in this America’s Cup cycle.
Tom Slingsby and Paul Goodison were very much ‘on it’ all afternoon with Andrew ‘Rookie’ Campbell and Michael Menninger providing excellent Flight Control and trim throughout. The signature bow-down, windward heel trim that the team ultimately prefer was tempered with flat flight upwind at desperately low, surface-skimming flight. Impressive to watch as ‘America’ nudged 24 knots upwind and well over 30 knots downwind when the breeze filled.
Finding that breeze was a chore though with the wind fading further offshore whenever the team ventured out so the call was made to head back into the Bay where a coastal breeze-line yielded 10 knots at times. Speaking afterward Terry Hutchinson summed the day up perfectly saying: “Today was a great day and a culmination of three really good days here on Pensacola Bay and I think the afternoon sea breezes as we know at this time of year have delivered. It's great to be standing here on the dock at 6:00pm and the breeze is still up, and the guys had a great day sailing, another day where the batteries got used so it's an absolute win.”
Reflecting on the team’s time in Pensacola, Terry simply could not have been more grateful for the way the local community and government bodies took NYYC American Magic firmly to their hearts saying: “Pensacola has been a phenomenal partner, they've embraced NYYC American Magic and they brought us into their community here and we're so fortunate to have the very genuine support not only of the local government but the local community, the folks at the grocery store, everybody out of the Portofino, everybody at the Andrews Institute, Doctor Hackle and everything that he does for us, so it's definitely bittersweet to be packing up and heading to Barcelona and to get into really the final phase of the development of our programme as we move into AC37, but you really truly cannot thank the community enough for everything they've done for us. It’s a very humbling experience to be embraced in the minute they've embraced us.”
NYYC American Magic have had a productive winter testing session, arguably the best of all the challenger syndicates in this cycle but Terry Hutchinson is well aware that there’s still a long road ahead of the team in the run up to the Challenger Selection series that starts in Barcelona in September 2024.
Looking backwards and forward, Terry commented: “I think, more often than not, the team has executed really well on the water. We've done a good job of upskilling the younger guys and balancing that with the experience of Paul (Goodison) and Tom (Slingsby) and Rookie (Andrew Campbell) but you look at the whole operation, you look at what the team did to get Patriot out on the water four days ahead of schedule and then each milestone that the team achieved I think when we reflect back here and you consider that this time last year we were offloading Patriot and the gear into Shed 5 it's amazing how much has happened in the last 12 months I know we'll evaluate pretty hard the session and will make sure that we look at it critically, but standing here today everybody's probably pretty happy with what we've done and where we are and we also know that we've got a lot of work ahead of us.”
By the time the team came off the water, the shore team had largely dismantled the base on the dockside and NYYC American Magic will be leaving American shores in the coming weeks in the best possible shape with the fondest memories of their time in Pensacola.
All eyes on Barcelona now.
Recon Notes: America docked out at 12:00 and had the main up by 12:30. The team then towed the AC40 to the south end of the bay to await the sea breeze. We waited for the sea breeze to fill in until the AC40 was towed 5nm offshore at 13:20. The crew attempted to get up in the light breeze without a tow (unsuccessfully) for 15 minutes. The crew finally opted for the first of several tow ups at 13:58. The further offshore the team sailed; the breeze got lighter. The decision was then made to tow all the way back into the Bay.
Sailing commenced again at 15:11. America sailed in displacement mode on starboard trying to get up for around 20 minutes, before tacking onto port and getting foil borne in about 4 minutes. No tow ups were needed for the rest of the day.
‘America’ went into the long stints on a single board for the remainder of the day, with Chase 2 performing the "S" turns close behind. The very end of the day ‘America’ performed more frequent and successful manoeuvres. The AC40 ended the day with pre-start drills, both boards down, harden-up and bear-away.
We returned to the dock 5 hours and 10 minutes later to find the shore crew had almost completely dismantled the base. In all, ‘America’ completed 38 manoeuvres, 10 W/L's, sailed approximately 73nm, and had a total flying time of 119 minutes. Top speeds were approximately 24k upwind and 33k downwind.
Conditions: 12:20 SW 4k/ 13:03 S 6k/ 15:00 SW 6k/ 17:00 S 10k. Wind speed measured 8ft above sea level using a handheld anemometer.
Weather AM: 80° Partly Cloudy.
Weather PM: 84° Partly Cloudy.
Sea State AM: 1 1/2 ft swell offshore
Sea State PM: Light chop in shore
Total Tacks: 22 – 12 foil-to-foil, 7 touch & go, 3 touchdowns.
Total Gybes: 16 – 15 foil-to-foil, 1 touch & go, 0 touchdowns.
Recon Notes: America was on foil for a total of 119 minutes (5, 9, 4, 6, 14, 31, 5, and 45 minutes respectively)
Take off speed: 18 knots at 90° TWA (True Wind Angle)
Recon Notes: Initial take off was self, 7 additional self-ups, 0 tow ups.
Onboard AC40 Today:
Helms: Paul Goodison / Tom Slingsby
Trimmers: Michael Menninger / Andrew Campbell
Sails Used:
Mainsail (AM-LEQ MS1): 5 hours
Jib (J1): 3 hours 40 minutes
Dock-Out: 1200 Dock-In: 1735