THE RED MOON SHINES AS ORIENT EXPRESS FLY

On the water for the fourth straight day in a row, the Italian team put in another long session of some ten starts and short course races in a variety of breeze that at times became a challenge to stay on the foil. Pitting the heavier-weight LEQ12 against the nimble AC40 in marginal sub-10 knot conditions gives somewhat of a manoeuvrability advantage to the AC40 but where the LEQ loses in circles, it more than makes up for in a straight-line.

Honours were balanced towards the LEQ again in the final tally with the young superstar talent of Ruggero Tita and Marco Gradoni helming whilst in the AC40, Jimmy Spithill and Francesco Bruni – the experienced duo – were keeping the young guns on their toes through a near five-hour session from early morning through to mid-afternoon.

The Italian team have impressed enormously over the past four days with huge focus on the match-racing side and with a fantastic mix of talent bringing fresh ideas and approach whilst the old tricks are there to be learnt and absorbed. The future, both the immediate and beyond, looks incredibly bright for Italian sailing.

Max Sirena, the Team Director summed it up beautifully after sailing saying: “I'm actually pleased to see the level of the team in the water considering we’ve got two guys with 20 years or more of experience in match-racing against two young guys in this new game. So every day that we’re going out on the water to be two-boat and practising and racing it’s a learning process for us and I think the nice thing all these days is actually the attitude of the new guys in the approach to this new game and we are learning every day and it's good to have the benefit of so many good sailors available now between all the young guys and it’s giving us a lot of opportunity to raise the level up, so it's good.”

Max was asked smartly by the recon team about when the declaration of intent to launch would be made and responded: “I think we can expect that in the next couple of hours,” and then went on to explain the team’s thinking in relation to the other teams: “I think at the end everyone is more or less on the same schedule because the only thing you cannot change is the starting date of the event, so everyone at the beginning of the campaign is making his own best programme but at some stage you have to put the boat in the water so more or less it’s a kind of a corner and I think between weeks you will see all the boats in the water. There will be some which are probably launching later than another one, but I think at the end more or less we're going to be in the same window.”

Questioned as to ho radical the boats will be, Max gave an interesting answer alluding to INEOS Britannia and Alinghi Red Bull Racing with their technology partnerships, saying: “I think everyone will push pretty hard from a design point of view and specially from an aerodynamic point of view, we got few teams involved with the Formula One design teams so we are expecting something big from them, but at the end it’s going to be a yacht sailing in the water and so you need to make sure all the bits and all the parts of the boat are going to be in one piece.”

Whilst Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli were putting the hammer down in Cagliari, (in more ways than one - see the photo in the recon report below) over in Barcelona it was a more benign affair with a light weather front passing over ahead of some stronger breeze forecast for later in the week. Both Alinghi Red Bull Racing and NYYC American Magic opted for a maintenance day, leaving Orient Express Racing to put up their new LEQ12 mainsail and pair it with their brand new LEQ12 J1 jib and do their best to find some wind out on the America’s Cup racecourse. It was a tough ask but they did get flying after the usual faff with fitting brand new sails for the first time.

In pure manual flight mode, the French looked relatively comfortable and managed to execute a few foil-to-foil tacks as the breeze refused to get above 6 knots through their morning session. Thierry Douillard, Team Coach for Orient Express Racing Team added his perspective to the day saying: “We knew that it was a short period of sailing today because just some breeze in the morning, so we decide to do the dock-off quite early at 8.30am to try to use the wind we had. We had some tests to do and finally we came home at 12:30pm and we ticked some goals, so happy with the day...There is more wind at the end of the week so the goal was to put the (LEQ) sails up today for the first time to try to set the battens and everything to be sure that tomorrow we could sail with more solid wind, so that was the goal of the day.”

Looking at the mountain to climb in terms of preparation for the Louis Vuitton 37^th America’s Cup that is now looming large on the calendar, Thierry saw it as a stepped and phased approach saying: “For us first of all is to learn the boat handling and to improve our skill in manual flight controlling. That’s the first thing, and then to keep working on our processes to prepare everything for the AC75 so the process on the shore, with the performance team, with the design team, everything, so it's a long process we are going through, but the first one for us is to improve and to be race-ready with our boat handling.”

With the improvement in the forecast through to the weekend it will be very interesting to see how the French team go over the coming days. Vertical is the learning curve, big are the performance gains. (Magnus Wheatley)

On-Water Recon Report – Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli: The Italians rolled out their LEQ12(red) at 7:45, craned in at 8:05 as the AC40(white) was already floating. Dock-out was scheduled at 09:00, only helms swapped between boats compared to the previous day and two cameras were again fitted on Wing04 and one on Wing01. As red was being towed out of the harbour a thick fog forced the team to dock back in and stand by.

Approximately an hour later, both boats were towed towards La Sella del Diavolo where the offshore pressure was first measured 7-9kn from 305° with flat water. The first iteration of mainsail M1-1 was paired to the J1.5-2 on red and the M1 OD was paired to J1 OD on white.

As both boats started lining-up distanced on each tack, the bottom gate was being setup. The pressure seemed to be increasing slightly and hence the J2 was hoisted on white. In the meantime, the red boat kept on practicing starts on its own, focussing on the successful execution of full circles once in the box.

At 10:45 the 1st pre-start drill was run with red on port, circling around the Committee Boat and able to chase down white. White trimmed up and tacked, red bore away and gybed. When approaching the line, red was faster and better timed so being able to start undisturbed from white which was behind.

Similar entry strategy for the 2nd start which saw the white boat start ahead, slightly more to windward. As the boats were racing, red gained the lead with a wind shift and led all the upwind and downwind crosses.

The 3rd pre-start unfolded at 11:05 and saw red pushing white approaching the line, white more to leeward, red tacked to port once started. When racing, white matched red on each tack, winning the race.

The 4th start saw red on port, sailing its circle and chasing down white. On the line, the boats seemed to have started evenly with a gap between the two.

On the 5th drill, white on port entry, it was an aggressive battle coming up and white seemed to be early over the line. 

On the 6th, red touched down exiting the full circle and had to reset to take off, white took advantage chasing red down and both started slightly late, red behind white. Racing was live with red tacking early splitting the course and white was ahead on the upwind crosses. The race was then abandoned as red fell off the foils on the top side of course where the breeze seemed less favourable.

At 11:35 the J1.5 was lowered on red and so was the J2 on white, to increase the sail plan with respectively J1-1 and J1 OD. As the breeze was decreasing, the team seemed to work on the removal of one of the port foil cameras with a hammer! As the LEQ12 was towed up on foils, it did not survive its first tack on the top of the course, with the pressure too marginal.

At 11:55 the prototype was up foiling and the 7th pre-start drill was run with red on port. After the usual strategy in the box both boats seemed to start on time with red slightly more vulnerable and tacking right away.

Similarly, the 8th drill unfolded shortly after with white on port. Approaching the line white was slightly more leeward, dropped the board to roll onto port tack, red matched and white rolled straight back to starboard tack. The boats started racing, white in front of the red on the first cross in the shifty light air, beginning to affect red which bore away building to tack but came off the foils exiting the manoeuvre.

On the 9th start, red was on port and managed to start slightly more to windward than white which laid down to the pin. As both boats started engaging closely both came off the foils in a lull.

White managed a self-take-off while red was towed up for the 10th start drill of the day with red on port entry. Both yachts sailed all the way to the right boundary and, approaching the line, red started windward of white. As racing was live, red fell off the foils after a tack and the day was called for red while white stayed out for a longer while flying its J1 OD.

Overall the boats seemed to have similar boat speeds in this light air. For this day an approx. foiling time of 115 minutes and approx. 50 tacks and 40 gybes [Michele Melis AC Recon].

On-Water Recon Report – Orient Express Racing Team: We had a cloudy morning in Barcelona with northerly light winds. The French Team had to go for an early session if they wanted to sail, according the forecast so at 8:40am the AC40 was craned in and at 9:10am they docked-out and hoisted up a new mainsail + jib sails. As they were new, they struggled a little bit to hoist them.

At 10am the AC40 was towed out of the harbour and a wind from around 6 knots was blowing from 335 º TWD, that is an offshore wind in Barcelona, so the team got some distance from the land to find cleaner wind before the AC40 triggered the towline and started sailing. After one thousand meters (approx.) reaching on port tack, the sailors stopped, and a technician jumped onboard to make some checks and quickly went back to the chase boat. After that they continued sailing upwind on port tack before a touch down tack and stopping again.

It was 10:22am when two technicians jumped on again to perform some checks on the rig.

At 10:30am technicians jumped back to the chase boat and the AC40 started sailing again at a TWA of between 75° and 85° to get the boat lifted onto the foils at a speed of 16 knots in this marginal wind condition.

Once foiling they started pointing upwind to TWA 45°. Then after they started sailing downwind TWA 125° and performed four perfect gybes in a row, two ‘touch & go’ gybes and two ‘touchdown’ gybes.

After that, they started pointing again upwind and they performed two tacks, one great and the other one was ‘touchdown’. It was 11am and the wind dropped a little bit, they tried to take-off on their own, but they could not, so then the Chase Boat had to help. They managed to make a successful take-off on starboard tack, and they kept a close upwind run sailing until Port Olímpic, where they tacked but it was too light and even though the manoeuvre was really good they touched the water when they were on port tack.

The wind dropped to 2-3 knots. The Orient Express Racing Team tried to make some tow-up attempts to put the boat over the foils with no success.

At 11:50 am they decided to go back to port. Jose L. Piñana - AC Recon