HARD GRINDING AMERICA

Ugly at times, in fact downright ragged to the naked eye, this was testing as it should be done. Uncomfortable and uncompromising, American Magic are determined to find the limits and push ‘America’ their highly modified AC40 into places where it really doesn’t want to go. The search for speed and the forensic intensity that the team of the moment are showing is impressive, logical and highly effective.

Today was day two of the test schedule on the newly declared mainsail - the MNC2, decked out with a myriad of tell-tales and with a drone hovering incredibly close to the boat at times, this was all about finding cross-overs, flow dynamic and jib pairings with the J1 and J3 getting a thorough work-out as the wind built. A long upwind out of Barcelona took the team just off Sitges and within shouting distance of Vilanova where they performed so well at the weekend, before lighting the after-burners and streaking downwind in a harem-scarum run back home.

Tacks and gybes were marked by touchdowns. ‘America’ has never been the easiest boat to sail with its delicately small starboard bulb with its pinched run off and skinny foils proving to be a handful through manoeuvres. So too, the beefed-up silver port foil that looks blisteringly fast upwind but a bit loose downwind. You suspect that if the team keep persisting with this set-up, they’ll find a pot of gold in terms of boatspeed and that’s the whole game in a nutshell. Ugly but effective. That’s how you win the America’s Cup.

Onboard initially today, the winning crew from the weekend of Tom Slingsby, Paul Goodison, Michael Menninger and Riley Gibbs but throughout the four hour session, the team rotated with Andrew Campbell jumping in alongside coach Tom Burnham and in total the team foiled for some 1 hour and 27 minutes. Valuable but tough out there.

Speaking afterwards, the honest-talking trimmer Andrew Campbell gave it straight, as he always does, when he commented on the goals for the day, saying: “Today was more of a good day for us to settle in and try testing settings for a longer period of time and the conditions right on the beach for us aren't that different from the conditions a mile or two miles offshore and sure we went 17 miles upwind but I don't think we're ever more than five four or five miles offshore, so we're always kind of in what we think are similar conditions to what we're going to see off the beach here in Barcelona and that's always in our minds but yeah if we have the right day we can spend a long time going upwind, picking the settings and getting the boat settled, and getting the people settled, and that’s valuable for us.”

And talking about the splashdown, sky-rockets and genuine looseness on display, Andrew added: “Tacks and manoeuvres are hard and trying to figure out how they're going to work and how to make these boats function at a high rate is not easy and it’s part of the process of making foiling boats go around the race track, so we had a lot of people swapping on and off today and it's part of the battle.”

Andrew continued with the debrief saying: “We were going through all kinds of different settings through the course of the day and so you know we had sections where we were doing some things one way and some things another way and some settings aren't always as pretty as others…These long sections are really great for getting our aero shapes set up, it gives us time to get not only get the shape setup but then get good photos and good scans of them so our priority for these long segments is to let the boat settle and you know the boats are so dynamic that anytime you snap a photo it's just a moment in time when you're going through a big dynamic change and so to let the boat settle and to get a few photos if we get one good photo out of each stretch then we're pretty happy.”

Talking about the sail development, it’s clear that everything is on the table for American Magic who have some serious talent shoreside in the sail loft: “Well the cool thing is that we saw the range of the breeze. We saw so little breeze we couldn't take off and then we saw too much wind at the end almost so to see this mainsail go through that range is exciting for us, to see a couple of different jibs through the transitions and how they set up against this sail you know that's all really good learning for us and how the sails pair up, how that changes the loads and the dynamics on the boat, that's all really positive and we had a lot of people on board so you know the more people can see those kinds of effects are all really beneficial for us.”

The grind goes on. American Magic are deadly serious about this America’s Cup. (Magnus Wheatley)

On-Water Recon Unit Notes – NYYC American Magic: A full range of breezes session for NYYC American Magic who waited patiently for an hour on the water, waiting for the wind to fill to start their training.

‘America’, the team’s modified AC40, was rolled out at 10:00h followed by the usual mast procedure and some electronic and hydraulic checks. The team craned the boat into the water with the same foil configuration as yesterday: both anhedral gull wings with the weight correcting ‘aero-bombs’ on the foil arms and elevated tips. After placing the anemometer on top of the mast and their daily dock-chat they docked out at 12:00h

Tom Slingsby, Paul Goodison, Andrew Campbell and Michael Menninger where onboard when they hoisted the newly declare MNC-2 mainsail and waited for 1 hour with slight breeze outside the harbour. At 13:04h the boat was towed onto its foils 2 nautical miles from shore where they hoisted the J1 with a little bit more of a breeze but barely reaching 6knts and flat sea.

At 13:18h they started sailing upwind on starboard tack and needed tow assistance to take- off and then foiled for 5 minutes before ending in a touch-down tack. Next, they did a self-take-off which ended in exactly the same way.

By 13:55h, the J1 was down and the J3 up having Tom Burnham onboard and changing crew configuration, Andrew Campbell for Riley Gibbs. In the vicinity of El Prat Airport, they started a long upwind which consisted of 8 touch-down tack manoeuvres experimenting with ride heights.

A battery swap took place 17 nautical miles away from La Barceloneta beach having already built to 11knts with a notable 0.65m chop sea state. Proceeding with two more touch-down tacks in 10 minutes before heading downwind to Barcelona at a blistering 40knts.

At 15:40h with 15knts from 215º they did five foiling gybes and one last majestic tack before heading straight to the port entrance where they lowered their sails and ended their training, docking in at 16:20h. (Elia Miquel - Recon Unit NYYC)