LUNA ROSSA AT FULL ENGAGEMENT

After an initial foil data gathering exercise on straight-lines, the Chase Boats threw in the customary marks and created a short course with tight boundaries and placed the fully instrumented Chase Boat 1 on the course as opposition. This is a technique honed from AC36 in the lead up to the 2021 regatta that Philippe Presti, the team’s coach, perfected shadowing the AC75 and made major gains in boat positioning and handling as the Chase Boat puts the sailors under serious pressure. Out in Cagliari, and with six people onboard at times, the Chase Boat was pushing hard and demanding more and more from the team.

Shannon Falcone, the on-water Operations Manager for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli described the technique saying: “The racecourse is so small with the boundaries and everything and with Chase 1 you basically sail like you're sailing a boat, so you've got targets, true wind angles, you’ve got all the instrumentation onboard to sail as if you were sailing the race boat and in the manoeuvres you drop the speed so you're not gaining too much in the manoeuvres and so on and you just try to basically be on it. The good thing is I've got a great team - Max (Sirena) calling tactics you know Gilo (Nobili) navigating, Mickey calling relatives so just feels like you know we can really bring it to the boys and show them how it's done.”

Luna Rossa looked very tight today. Low flight upwind with almost-perfect end-plating to the bustle and the surface of the water, and powerful, controlled flight downwind, in two and a half hours they barely came off the foils and pushed through a total of 40 tacks and gybes with an 88% foil-to-foil ratio and no touchdowns.

Shannon summed up the day saying: “It was a good day out on the water, the sea-breeze filled in nicely, the young guys on the boat too, and ultimately it was just you know laps around the racecourse. I think something you may have spotted was us interfering with the LEQ a bit more, that's just part of the process to get the sailors onboard, starting the comms loop, calling relatives, putting them in difficult situations. It’s easy to sail around by yourself ultimately and that's something that not being able to do two boating and so on you have to sort of engage in that end of something and that with Philippe last campaign it got really good with the AC75 so just bringing it with our LEQ now and hopefully helps the guys to debrief situations that they haven't had before and just get them talking about it. It's all about communications really.”

On this form, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli look the stand-out challenger and with more sailing planned this week, their winter training in Cagliari looks to be on point and the new starboard foil appears to be working extremely well with low leeway and fast through the manoeuvres. The Italians keep impressing and the summer in Barcelona is coming fast. Stay tuned for more action this week.

On Water Recon Unit Notes: The Italian LEQ12 rolled out at 11:45 and the mast was stepped to be craned in at 12:10. Shortly afterwards, the usual routine checks followed as dock-out was scheduled at 13:10. While exiting the harbour, the forecast looked quite more stable compared to previous sailing days with southerly S-SSE sea-breeze between 8-11kn and mostly flat water with some dying sea state SE swell.

The main M1 was hoisted with the J1.5 jib and by 13:40 the LEQ12 was all set and foilborne on portside tack after a self-take-off with 6 sailors on board. In the first 30 minutes, the LEQ12 completed a small amount of manoeuvres sailing mostly straight line for testing.

While the Recon Unit followed the prototype, Chase2 dropped some marks laying out the usual race course and quickly was the LEQ12 on race pace. A total of 3 pre-starts, 6 upwind and 6 downwind legs were observed between several breaks in which sailors either swapped pods or boarded Chase 1 leaving 4 crew on the prototype.

Towards the afternoon the sea-breeze seemed to shift slightly more easterly and the Recon Unit alternated between awaiting at marks or following the LEQ12 or Chase1. The latter was used on each leg creating some interference on the LEQ12 to push comms onboard and some tactics were observed. After foiling approximately for an hour around the marks, the LEQ12 sailed freestyle for the last 10 minutes before the team called it a day.

The LEQ12 was recorded foilborne for approximately 102 minutes out of 205 total with 21 tacks, 19 gybes and several mark roundings manoeuvres [Michele Melis AC Recon].

Dock out: 1310 Dock-in: 1620

Conditions: 13:20 S-SSE 8-11kn / 15:10 SSE 9-12kn / 15:50 SE 8-11kn /

Weather AM: 20°c @ 1200, sunny.

Weather PM: 21°C @ 15:00, sunny.

Sea State: 13:30 flat / 0.4m 5s SE / 14:20 SE chop Beaufort 4

 Onboard Today:

Helms: Francesco Bruni / Jimmy Spithill / Marco Gradoni

Crew: Umberto Molineris / Vittorio Bissaro / Andrea Tesei

Sails Used:

Mainsail M1 (MN1-1S): 3 hours

J1 (J1.5-1-A): 2 hours 40 minutes

Total Tacks: 21 - 17 foil-to-foil, 4 touch & go, 0 touchdown.

Total Gybes: 19 – 18 foil-to-foil, 1 touch & go, 0 touchdowns.